Wednesday, November 02, 2011

Hairy Gets a Haircut

Hairy is the big black hairy ear tipped feral who was trapped over on Country Club drive in Corvallis and ended up at Heartland. He would have died there, as unadoptible, but they called me, since he had that ear tip, to see if I might know where he belonged.

I didn't. His crime that got him trapped was sneaking into someone's house to eat their cats' food. He was starving. This led me to believe the poor cat was displaced, either a caretaker moved and left him, or somebody trapped and dumped him.

I had a woman who said she would place him, so I took him straight up to her place. However, she was very elusive about the placement. First she said it was with an old woman who fed the cats table scraps, then said it was with some man, who had a shed where he confined them for awhile, but that two of the three she'd placed there had already been killed by coyotes.

I decided this was no good and went to retrieve him. Good thing I did. He was very very ill, with URI, in the cage in her house. How had she not noticed, I wondered. No matter. He went straight to the vet and got a convenia injection before coming back here.

I put him in a cage in the garage room while I searched for a home. I had several possibilities but they all fell through one by one. So I opened the cage and he can come and go, but he thinks that cage, even though it's open all the time, is his. It's his security. He runs back to it, whenever he feels threatened. He's a big black hairy baby.

No big deal. The guy's had a rough time of it in his life. He's HUGE. He could beat up anybody on the planet. He has very long fine hair, too, a curse for a feral, although I don't think he is feral.

Because of that long fine hair, he gets mats. So every three or four months, I clip him. Today was one of those days. He had developed mats along his back. Time to clip them off.

Now Hairy loves to be clipped. I massage his back too and give him a brushing. All this attention goes to his hairy head and he will become down right ecstatic to see me walking in with the clippers.

You really have to know a cat, especially an all black very hairy cat, to be able to read expressions like "ecstatic".

I told him, as I brushed the back of his head, "Now Hairy, it is that time, you know. I have to update your vaccination, your flea treatment, worm you and clean your ears. But what you really need, Hairy, is a haircut!"

"You look fabulous, big boy." And he does.

I don't like to toot my own horn, but I'm not as terrible with the clippers as I used to be. I might be improving. I suppose that's a matter of perception. I am quite pleased with Hairy's haircut and I think he is happy with it too.

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