As a photographer, when I look through a camera I am looking for the beauty within the subject. I couldnt help it or change that impulse when I was a portrait and wedding photographer. It was how I saw. Now that Im up to my neck in all things shelter and have become a full time unpaid advocate for underdogs and undercats, it occurred to me that Im still seeking beauty, but my ideas of what is beautiful have changed. A couple of Sundays ago we got a call about a cat shot in Louisville. When I pulled up I saw children sitting on a beach towel in the front yard with a mother standing holding an infant. They were all gathered around a pretty black and white neighborhood cat. The cat was alive. The children were petting it. The cat had been shot in the back with a high powered pellet gun and was paralyzed, but not in terrible pain. The cat had managed to drag itself from wherever it had been shot to their door, seeking shelter, seeking help. Everyone was teary eyed. The children had just gone to their grandfathers funeral the day before, so were being overwhelmed with death and mortality. I walked up and the children looked up with big eyes asking if I was going to be able to help it. I looked at the cat and looked at the mom and said I would try. After placing a call to the sheriffs department and having them come out to look at the injury and make sure it was filed that someone on their street had shot a cat, I bundled the cat up and took it home. I told the mother that the paralysis did not look good and that most likely the cat would have to be euthanized, but Id do what I could. When I go the cat home I put it on pain meds, though its pain level was low. Monday I conferred with a vet and took the cat over to have Amanda show me how to express its bladder, because it could not pee. Id thought we would have to euthanize it, because it was paralyzed, but the image of the children gathered around it and the hope in their eyes made me want to give it every chance, beyond the ordinary, beyond, perhaps, even the reasonable. So, I watched a you tube video on expressing a cats bladder (weirdly, yes these videos exist) and took care of the cat. At first, though I kept her on pain meds and comfortable, she would not eat or drink. Then she perked up and started eating and drinking and greeting me when I walked in, sitting up all perky and rubbing her head on the cage. No progress at all on walking or peeing. I told myself Id give her a week, in case the damage to her spine was just swelling. In case she would recover the use of her back limbs. In case anything, basically, in honor of the image of the children who hoped with everything they had we could save her. Well now it has been two weeks. The lovely cat still cant walk. I express her bladder twice a day. She seems happy and content, but as more kittens and cats come in that need care, I have the crushing realization that I cant continue to keep her because she isnt adoptable and because I have too many others that need my help and care. I see beauty in the world around me. Life is beautiful. Saving animals, helping save animals, helping heal animals, helping them on their way to happy lives is what drives me and all of our other fosters and volunteers at CCARS. Its going to wound me, hard, to make the decision to end the life of a cat that I could only take so far. Thank you for backing us at CCARS. We are doing the best we can.
Posted on: Sun, 01 Jun 2014 14:15:00 +0000
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