Feline Rescue

 

A few weeks back, I wrote this post about a cat the wife & I helped after it showed up all beaten & bloody.  I didn't follow up on it - I thought I had - but it turns out I did it on my personal Facebook account.  I present to you what I wrote here:

In case anyone cares: the stray cat that's lived in our garage for two weeks - who came to our neighbor's porch quite beat up - who was treated by a vet & taken by us to recuperate - was accepted by the Fort Worth animal organization Animal Hope this afternoon. They're going to have their vet look at him, & while the space he's in isn't quite as large as our garage, it's far warmer, & once he's used to it, he'll get to move around a bit more. We'll go visit him until he's adopted - he's a good old tom & deserves to be the king of the household. I miss him & hate to go into the garage now.

Well, the story didn't have a happy ending.  The people at Animal Hope - who kept insisting that they were the only "no-kill" shelter in North Texas (which isn't true) & who gave us a nice note that read, "We promise we'll find a nice home for him" - tested him for FIV, found out that he was FIV positive, & planned to euthanize him.  Should I mention they would only accept him if I gave the organization a donation?  That we gave them a hundred bucks?  Should I also mention that the director of this "no-kill" shelter lectured me about how sometimes they have to kill animals?

In any event, I wasn't going to let him die.  I went to get him.  The same director actually complained that his staff should have made me sign papers to give ownership to the organization so I couldn't take him back & I guess their bloodlust was foiled.  They seemed to think I wanted to simply release him in the wild, despite my protestations to the contrary.

He came back home with us.  I had been telling his story on Next Door but chose not to continue there, mainly because of annoying personal emails I was getting.  But someone on that weird site had mentioned a place called Best Friends which took in FIV+ cats.  But they were way out in Utah, & I'm over here in Texas.  Not that I wouldn't drive to Utah, but I thought I'd better explore options close to home first.

Magda around this time renamed him Ziggy.  Sometime later his infection returned & he stopped eating.  My neighbor & I took him to a different vet & he got more antibiotics plus steroids.  He recuperated & was soon back to his lovable, often persnickety self.  He liked to bite me, he never broke the skin, but he would just walk up to me & bite me.  The truth is, he liked everyone else more than me.  Magda, my neighbor, the vet tech.  I was like the person who fed him & changed his litter but I got all the bites.

One of the places I spoke to, Texas Litter Control in Houston, gave me a ton of information about FIV+ cat sanctuaries (they have one) & I texted back & forth with a nice person there who asked me lots of questions about Ziggy.  That seemed to be his fate: an FIV positive cat sanctuary.  I figured it was probably the happiest outcome.

But then: Magda reached out to students at UNT & a graduate student showed interest.  He came over to meet him & was somewhat difficult to read.  He had never owned a cat before, but was, according to Magda, a smart & responsible student, & after a week or so he indicated he wanted to adopt Zig.

Last Saturday we took the cat over to the apartment.  The grad student had bought lots of food, bowls, a litter box, & a little cat hole thing that I guess Ziggy was supposed to sleep in.  Ziggy came in & promptly went under the sofa, but once I opened up some food, he came out to eat, & stayed around us the entire time, begging for love & exploring tentatively.  He didn't seem like a cat who'd lived outside most of his adult life.  He seemed like a cat who had come home.

It's been a few days & the grad student & I text often.  He tells me they've become "besties" & sent me the picture of the cat that graces this post - who's now named Vincent, by the way, you know, because of his bad ear - lazing with him on the floor.  The grad student has a patio that's enclosed so the cat can't get out, but Vincent has shown very little interest in going back out there.  Smart old thing!  He's put that life behind him.

You know, I had my first cat when I was close to the grad student's age, & I think cats are perfect pals for someone at that point in their lives: not terribly needy, comforting when you want it, cool if you're busy studying or what-not.  I've offered myself if he needs to go out of town, I'll gladly go over there to visit & change the litter & feed him.  I miss him terribly.

& there are issues - his bum ear, the remnant of a long-ago brawl, still bothers him, & he sometimes scratches it until it bleeds (!).  & of course there's the whole FIV situation - there's definitely heartbreak somewhere down the road.  (My first cat had feline leukemia.)

Still - Vincent is home now.  His wounds have almost completely healed, he's eating well, he gets sunlight & love.  It's by far the happiest ending to this story that could possibly be.