WELL. I am very slightly tipsy. My mother came over with a bottle of Costco margarita after the Very Bad Events of this weekend.
On Friday, I was driving up to work with Leif, who was very bummed because he had one more day of school, while Gavin and Zenny were both at home for the first day of summer break with dad.
"Why is there a motorcycle helmet on that telephone pole?" he asked.
"Well, because this is a dangerous curvy road, and people who don't know it very well often cream themselves. Look, there's a memorial, see the vase with the dried flowers? And there. And around this curve, right there. Last year I saw a car in the ditch right here. That one was a college girl. And - OH MY GOD THAT CAT WAS ALIVE." Right in the middle of this morbid conversation, we zoomed past a little cat in the gutter, and I watched it in the rear-view mirror. I fought with myself all the way up the hill to the elementary school.
Pull over!
No, he's probably just resting.
He's not resting, you asshole, he was hit by a car!
Well he looks okay, maybe he'll feel better and go home.
He won't go home! He was hit by a car! Turn around!
Someone else will stop for him.
No, someone else will run over him on purpose! TURN AROUND.
I rolled Leif out at school and turned the truck around, zooming back down the road to rescue the cat.
I ran across two lanes of traffic, holding my arms out and trusting the cars not to smash me.
The little cat looked surprised to see me.
Oh shit! his ears said, and he tried to claw his way up onto the sidewalk, convinced I was there to finish him off with a shovel. Realizing his legs were useless, he rolled over on his back and hissed at me, flicking his ears self-consciously, like he was pretty sure I wouldn't buy it.
It's probably a bad idea to pick up a terrified cat with your bare hands. That is a good way to wind up with chewed-off hands. For a minute I panicked there on the side of the road, shielding him from cars as they whizzed around me a bit aggressively, probably thinking I was some guilty bastard who had just run over a cat. When there was a break in the traffic, I ran back to the truck and grabbed the first thing I could find to wrap the cat in; my canvas work bag. I dumped out everything onto the floor of the truck (my sandwich was lost on the sidewalk), then I ran back across the road and grabbed the cat in the bag before he could decide what to do about it. I tucked him into the passenger seat, texted my boss to let him know I would be late, and zoomed home to pass the confused little guy off to my hapless husband, who had been planning a nice day of home renovation up until that moment.
The man and kids caromed over to the animal hospital, where they determined that A) the cat's back was fractured and his lungs were bruised, but he was otherwise doing pretty good, and B) he was chipped and had owners, who had put in a lost pet notice with the Humane Society. This was good news!
"His name is Fatty," the vets said.
"Maybe that is why he ran away," Gavin said.
Mike took the cat home while the vets contacted his owners. We relaxed a bit, feeling relieved that they would be able to make the decision to pursue surgery or help him pass on, and that he would be loved and cared for either way.
But a few hours later they called. "Um, they said you can keep him." WHAT. Those perfect, terrible ASSHOLES. We decided to pursue every treatment and do all we could do to get Fatty back on his feet. With a new name. A BETTER name. A name like... Flatty. I called him Flatty. I shouldn't have, but I did, and it stuck.
After the kids were in bed, Mike took the cat to the referral hospital to find a surgical consult. The surgeon was off-island, because OF COURSE he was. When the hospital tried to contact the on-call surgeon at the backup clinic, he was off-island as well. The guys at the referral hospital were kind of cheesed about it. Flatty wasn't toileting himself, so they squeezed him out and made him comfortable again. This really wasn't a good thing. If you're going to spend your life in a kitty wheelchair, you at least need to be able to poop. Mike finally got home at 3am, tired and sad.
After a few hours of sleep, we took the little cat in for a last exam by the delinquent surgeon. Zenny named him "Jack be Nimble", which was weirdly appropriate and optimistic.
But it wasn't going to work. The nerves were too damaged. This was no kind of life for anyone. We made the decision to put him down, and held him with kisses and quiet words while he passed on peacefully. It beats being smashed on the side of the road, I am certain.
I'm angry at the people who hit him and didn't stop, the hundreds of people who drove by without taking him off the road, the owners who abandoned him without even saying goodbye and stiffed the good samaritans with the vet bills.
Some of our family wanted to contribute to his final expenses, so we set up a donation page
here.
It's just been a really sad, difficult weekend.
