Big Mike 3 You watch this video and think, how could he ever be pugnacious? 😉
I’m convinced that animals – like childen – are put on the planet to make us liars. After waxing rhapsodic in my last post about how Big Mike curls up into a ball when we torture him with healing measures, he abruptly decided he’d had enough.
It was only a matter of time, I supposed. Even reincarnated deities can’t be expected to tolerate an unending series of indignities when they’re pissed off about them. (The Dalai Lama famously told Time magazine that if a human being “never shows anger, then I think something’s wrong. He’s not right in the brain.”)
Once again, Mike proved himself all too human. Kim and I were changing his bandages a week ago, and he f-r-e-a-k-e-d. Began bucking wildly like a bronco, while I tried desperately to hang onto him. I hate scruffing a cat that big – and Mike doesn’t have much fat to scruff – but I had to, to prevent him from leaping off the bathroom counter with his bandaging incomplete. (His wound, while better every week, is still open and I fear him getting more crud in it like he did in the field.) After an interminable amount of struggle, hiss, growl, contortion (tho no biting or scratching – he refused to sink to that level), we finally finished and let him go. And my right hand was throbbing, tweaked anew.
I was stunned at this new development. After Kim left, I found him hiding under the bed and lay down near him. What the hell was THAT? I demanded. He again looked sheepish, stretched and came over to rub his giant head against my aching hand. His eyes told me, I had to try. I need for this to be OVER.
I know, I told him. I need for it to be over too. I need for you to get better. I need for you to get a beautiful home because every day it gets harder to imagine packing you into a carrier and taking you far away where I won’t get to see you anymore. I need to stop getting weepy when I think of the above. I need to make more money so I can keep you in cat food. (I have never seen a cat eat this much!)
One thing I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older is the difference between wanting and needing. One reason I’ve always been so bad with money is because I confused the two – really up until I started the animal rescue work four years ago. I needed a new purse every year. I needed that getaway I couldn’t afford. More, I deserved it.
I’m now humbled and bemused at how wrong my thinking was. What we truly need (in addition to food and water and shelter) is to be compassionate, to love our friends and family, and to hopefully ease the suffering of those who need help. The critters deserve it.
And make no mistake – I would LOVE to have a new purse. I’ve had the same one for three years, and it’s getting so beat-up. But money has been tight this year (I wasn’t kidding about needing to make more) and when I weigh the cost of rehabilitating a gorgeous being like Big Mike, there’s no contest. The new purse can wait; I might want one, but I need Big Mike to be well, and he needs me to help make it so.