“Let your heart be light…”

Just a quick update to say I have not written for a couple of weeks because the news has been largely, well… BAD. Soon after my happy update that his grafts were doing great, it all went south. Big Mike developed a nasty infection, and his grafts were grave danger of failing completely. I was just heartsick – not to mention enormously stressed. Over the course of the last two weeks, I’ve made the trek to Los Altos eight times (around 90 minutes of driving round trip, and of course the appointment time) so that anxious doctors could check his wounds, bathe his grafts, re-bandage him – all in an attempt to save the surgical efforts.

(I should also mention that these weeks have been Litquake’s year-end donor campaign, which fell in my lap. And a friend had to be suddenly hospitalized, and asked me to take care of her two cats, which I’ve now done for two weeks. And now my neighbors have left town and asked me to take of… their cat. And money is hideously tight. Can you say circuit overload times ten?)

I reached the nadir of stress on Wednesday when I left Mike for the afternoon so their senior doctor (a friend of Mike’s benefactor) could have a look at him. I hated leaving him – he just hates being in a cage – and while I was in a meeting in San Francisco that afternoon I got the call: there had been a little “incident.” A technician did not have a firm grip on him and he squirmed out of her arms, falling to the hard floor below without a good pair of legs to break his fall. They had to rebandage him, and noted honestly that a small area of separation had gotten larger from the fall.

I snapped.

When I picked him up a couple of hours later, I raged. I do not want that technician to ever, EVER handle Mike again. What the hell is wrong with this hospital? etc. ETC. – words I feel sheepish about now. These are good people who really care about animals and are trying their best. It was just my utter frustration speaking, and my upset that here it was, almost Christmas, and I’ve had zero time for so much as a holiday cup of tea.

What shaped my shit up, as always, was Big Mike himself, who has been nothing short of extraordinary. He curls up quietly under hospital staff’s prying fingers, doesn’t fuss, suffers the pain of bandage changes with courage and elegance. Yesterday when I brought the carrier in for our Saturday trip to the hospital, he literally walked in of his own accord. When I told a technician that he was a street cat, she was stunned.

Anyway, the news is finally not all bad! His surgeon, who had been gone for two weeks, saw him yesterday and was pleased to see that the infection had subsided, and to her, the upper graft still looked alive. The bottom was half dead, but when she took off the dead skin, she found thriving skin growing beneath the scab. There is, she said, much reason to hope that Mike’s suffering is coming to an end. Would there be a better Christmas present??

After the appointment I passed a Target on my way to the freeway and pulled in to purchase a $5 tree skirt. As I wandered the big ugly store, feeling buoyed by the doctor’s words, Bing Crosby crooned his famous song, and the phrase that infiltrated my brain was “let your heart be light.”

So I haven’t been able to celebrate the season to my liking, and I’m burdened with more responsibilities than I can possibly do well. But Big Mike is doing better, and I’m surrounded with all kinds of love of the feline variety. I’m following my heart and doing good and not just taking up space on the planet. And I’m thinking that’s reason for joy. I think Mike would agree.  Now if I could just get him to leave his decals alone.  😉