World of Make Believe

Pain, pain, pain. Ouch. And I'm still happy.

This stray cat had a litter of kittens at my cousin's house. A litter of four. One of them died already, and there is another one that is just skin and bones. A little gray one. The front legs on it are deformed slightly– but it's hanging on to life, somehow. 

So. I held the mother cat down. Forcibly. Got my arms clawed up and shit in the process. (This isn't the first cat I've done this with, either.)  And held her down, just so the little one, the little gray one could eat.

It ate. And ate. And ate. After awhile, the mother cat started sniffing it. I had to leave after an hour, to go see the Da Vinci Code (good, but not great movie). When I came back, the mother was licking and letting the runt feed along with the other two (healthy) kittens.

Progress. Gave me the warm fuzzies in spite of the raised pink and bleeding scratches. Oh, and the sneezing.  Obviously, the mother cat is fine. I know how to hold her without letting her go, even if I did get torn up in the process. But she recognizes the gray one as her kitten again, at least for tonight.

I'm not sure if it's too late or not. I do know I'm going to be checking up on that kitten daily, and if it gets neglected again I'm taking it and I can bottle feed it for a while, care for it like a mother cat would.

I think I've dealt with too many cats in my time. I just really hope this one makes it. I named it Hope. I don't know if it's male or female, and don't really care right now. I just want to keep it alive. But…I felt SO happy when I came back to see the mother cat treating Hope as her own again. If nothing else…at least I did that.