Piper's Chance

Piper, after a bath, and other treatments, at Heartland.  Piper's a boy!

Piper is the lone survivor.  So I'm told.  Or so the catman was told by an employee of the business nearby where this little life and death drama played out.

Her mother was dumped with kittens, a horror too large to contemplate for long, if you are one cursed with a capacity for empathy.  She died not long after she was dumped.   She was hit by a car, according to the employee of a nearby business.  Her kittens began to vanish one by one.  Nobody knows what happened to them.

Along came a kind soul.  Not a soul who watches tragedies happen and does nothing.  This was the action hero kind soul type.

Catman Roger.

I've known Roger for a long time.  I've known him since I spent months catching every unfixed cat roaming his seed warehouses.   Roger is the one who found Deaf Miss Daisy, along the road, in the ditch, after she was thrown from a car. 

Catman Roger is true blue all the way through.

He's a Viet Nam vet and former farmer.  And a really nice guy.

Roger brought the sick starving kitten home.  And then he called me.  I hadn't heard from him in years, but he got my cell number from another farmer I helped with cats and for whom I have a fondness also.

He wanted me to take the kitten and I didn't want to take the kitten and he knows the seesaw and that I will in the end.  But I didn't until I got word that Heartland would indeed take on the kitten and that Roger would provide a donation I could give Heartland, all of which I felt was fair.

This morning I picked up the kitten Roger left in a big carrier in the back of a pickup since he'd had to go to work.  He left me 12 large cans of cat food too and a bag of dry and that's Roger for you.

Heartland has Piper now.  She's very ill and very skinny and I hope she's negative for feline leukemia and goes on to a beautiful life.  Because happy endings are awesome and Miss Daisy got her start on one of those, also thanks to Roger, many many many years ago.

Sick little Piper, bless her soul.

UPDATE ON VISION:   Her eye is healing, although prognosis for ability to see with that eye in the future is unknown.  There is a lot of essential gear in an eye that can break loose or be damaged with blunt trauma.

The swelling is greatly reduced but nonetheless, I took up Heartland's offer to have a vet there take a look this morning.   She peered into the eye, now with conjunctiva unfortunately red from irritation from the antibiotic ointment, which the vet advised I stop.   I'll use just plain ointment to keep her eye moist instead.  She thought Vision to be in good shape for her age.  She said that ancient kitties hang from a thin thread and so can seem fine and suddenly its the end for them.  She had a cat who lived to be 19.

Vision is angry with me for taking her to a vet again, doing low growls in outrage when I enter the bathroom.  I am letting her out of there tonight because there's no reason to keep her there, outside of how easy it is for me to be able to cuddle and brush her, when she's in the bathroom.  No longer is there a half golf ball size swelling above her eye, nor is there the smaller one below it.

Vision likes chicken, so I'll get her some.  I told her if she survived, I'd give her chicken thrice weekly until she died or I died.  Now I made a promise I have to keep.  So off to the store to get her more chicken because she goes through it, I tell you.

My mattress is outside leaned up against the white siding of dead Jack's house.  I hosed it down good yesterday afternoon.  I do that twice a year, if there's to be a spell of hot, so it can completely dry.   Was supposed to be 90 today but it's not.  But it's hot enough the thing will dry.  Last night, minus the mattress, I slept on a sleeping bag on the plywood of my homemade bed.  I moaned and groaned half the night and the hard surface crushed nerves against bone, so that I woke numb in six places at least.

That mattress better be dry by nightfall.  Better be.