Miss Daisy

Miss Daisy is my wonderful blessing, a gift from the universe.

Here is how Miss Daisy came to me:

A farmer called me to say he'd found another cat. He'd heard her crying when he walked the quarter mile down the gravel driveway from the grass seed warehouses he then owned to the country road. She was in the ditch.

The days that August prior to Roger finding Miss Daisy were sweltering hot, over 100 degrees. On that stretch of road, people often race, since it is straight and often not patrolled. The fields also at night are full of hunting predators like coyotes. Somehow, this little muted calico had survived and Roger had found her.

In the two days before I could get over there to pick her up, she was accidentally closed into a shed. Roger couldn't understand how that could have happened.

Now I understand. Miss Daisy is completely deaf.

She somehow survived being thrown from a car like so much trash, walking in that unbelievable heat without water in predator country DEAF! And then Roger heard her cries and she was saved.

She had bad breath however and bad teeth for a cat under a year old. I had her sayed then saved the money up to get the teeth that needed extracted pulled. To do so, I travelled to La Center WA to take a trapping job that netted me a hundred bucks towards Miss Daisy's dental problems.

After her dental and extractions the vet told me she would never be well because she had plasma cell stomatitis, an auto-immune disorder. But I got a second opinion. A different vet said she might be infected with bartonella and maybe three weeks on zithromax would help. Actually, it cured her.

Miss Daisy fought for position here for a year amongst my own cats who were often really mean to her. Bangor found out she was deaf and would attack her from the rear. Miss Daisy was young and deaf but fierce and began offensive attacks on some of the cats giving her the worst time of it. She earned their respect and their love. She has been attacked at some point in her young life by a dog or coyote. If she sees a canine now, she will attack.

Everyone loves Miss Daisy now. Moby is her best buddy but there's not a cat in the house who doesn't adore her. She sleeps atop my face nights. She hates going outside or getting her feet wet. She yowls loud and excited with a toy mouse in her mouth, pressing it the floor wanting me to see that she's caught herself a mouse, even if it's just a toy.

I can't hear her in my car but I see her in the window as I drive up the driveway towards the house. She's opening and closing her mouth as she cries out in delight that I am home.