Why I got exactly zero work done today

Posted on | 9 months ago, in the late afternoon | 17 Comments

Fridays are usually low-word-count days, because on Friday I clean house. It’s a hangup from being raised Adventist, I guess – but it’s as good a day as any to get the homestead in order; so I go into Friday assuming that maybe I’ll scrape together a thousand words, and I’ll call it a win.

Not so today. Today started the usual way – Greyson wiggling happily beside my bed, snorfing me awake because OMG IT’S TIME FOR YOUR DOG TO GO PEE and I’m like, “Thanks for the heads up.” We went for our usual walk, I fed the kitty and opened her curtains so she could have her sunbeam time, and I started the housework marathon.

Around noon, the husband and I decided to take a break and go grab some lunch. Wendy’s sounded good, and we have one near by.

This fateful culinary decision turned our day up on its head.

We parked in the lot and walked toward the door, where we spotted … something. Something about the size and texture of a child’s winter mitten, blown up against the door jamb and inexplicably surrounded by French fries.* And we started walking slower … and slower … because something was not … quite … right about the mitten.

In fact, it was not a mitten. It only rhymed with mitten.

At first we thought it might be dead, and in pure horror, I reached down to touch it. It lifted its head and gazed at me with one eye, the other having swollen shut. It looked away despondently, gazed at the ground and sniffed listlessly at a French fry.

My husband freaked out. “JESUS CHRIST it’s a KITTEN! What…what do we DO?” And I was all, “I DON’T KNOW!” but I knew we couldn’t leave it there, so I picked it up and wrapped it in my sweater.**

We climbed back into the car, all plans of lunch aborted. The kitten didn’t make a sound, except to sigh and settle down like this was only the most recent unexpected catastrophe in its short little life, and it figured all this would soon be over one way or another. So once we were seated, and we had successfully retrieved a not-dead but sick and injured kitten, we talked our way to the next obvious course of action: we drove over the river to Spainy’s vet.

The Cat Clinic of Chattanooga is really the office of one single very nice vet, who was actually absent when we arrived. She’d had a hole in her schedule, so she’d run off to tackle an errand … but the people who worked there gave her a call and she turned around and came straight back. God bless that woman, I mean seriously.

I won’t bore you with the twenty minutes of terror, wondering if the FIV/FIP tests would come back negative – or if all we’d done was give this kitten a nicer place to die than a goddamn Wendy’s; and I won’t go into how calm and weak the kitten was, and how I was worried that one of its legs didn’t work right, or how it finally started to purr in my lap.

I’ll just give you the verdict and the end result: Tests came back negative. Female kitten, about 5 weeks old. Weighs one pound. Head/eye injury that had become infected. Bad case of fleas. Rather malnourished.

She is beautiful, though. Vet says that the stubby tail and head shape, combined with the excessive fluff, indicates some probable Persian ancestry someplace. The little girl was treated for fleas, worms, and the eye infection – and given her first round of kitten shots. And long story short, within a few hours of my frantically tweeting and FB’ing about the wee tiny newcomer … she’d scored a home.

Her new mom comes to pick her up tomorrow afternoon, and in a funny turn of coincidence, she’s the daughter of one of my professors at UTC.

So tonight I have a tiny gray fluff-bomb hanging out in my bathroom, tummy full of gooshy food, eye looking a bit better … lounging on towels that are placed upon a heated tile floor. (I turned on the floor for the first time ever, because she didn’t seem too interested in the bed we made for her.)

And all’s well that ends well.
Except that I sure as shit didn’t get any writing done.

Found: One Gray Kitten



* And this is what utterly broke my heart – someone had seen the kitten there, and had wanted to make a kind gesture, but it was so dumb and furthermore it meant that people had been walking by this injured, baby thing, and just LEAVING IT THERE for God knew how long. I still kind of want to cry just thinking about it.
** Yes, I brought a sweater. It’s cold in that Wendy’s.

Category: misc

Comments

17 Responses to “Why I got exactly zero work done today”

  1. Jennifer
    August 17th, 2012 @ 5:21 pm

    You did exactly what I would have done. I’m sorry you didn’t get writing done but, man, you did a very good deed.

  2. Jeremy
    August 17th, 2012 @ 5:21 pm

    You get like +1000 human points for saving a kitty, I’m pretty sure.

  3. Lesley Mitchell
    August 17th, 2012 @ 5:26 pm

    You made the world a slightly better place. That’s definitely something worth doing with your day!

  4. Christine
    August 17th, 2012 @ 5:26 pm

    So many people would have just left it there…you are an awesome person. That kitten is very lucky!

  5. Phoebe Kitanidis
    August 17th, 2012 @ 5:37 pm

    *sniff* Good story!

  6. Darin Calhoun
    August 17th, 2012 @ 5:38 pm

    You are a super-heroine!

  7. Kristine
    August 17th, 2012 @ 5:41 pm

    And a little bit of light was let into a dark place.

    I’m all sniffly now. I’m so glad the little girl has a home.

  8. Danie
    August 17th, 2012 @ 5:49 pm

    Sweetie, I know we haven’t talked in a while but reading this reminded me why I love you. When I was growing up I came from a family that hated cats- granted most of my family is allergic but I inexplicably am not- and I knew as a child that my one and only dream was to own a cat. When I grew up and got older and most of my friends got jobs at the Humane Society I discovered what a shit hand cats have been dealt. More dogs are adopted than cats, more cats are put down than dogs. When I met my husband I told him that my one goal in life was to own a cat, him not being a cat person was reluctant but eventually gave in. I was adamant on adopting a black cat since most black cats are often tortured and destroyed because of silly superstitions and rarely get a fair shake. My husband just wanted him to be fluffy. Our cat Cas was 7 months old and had literally been rescued by a wonderful agency from the Humane Societies euthanasia table. I mean it, the guy had the needle in hand three more seconds it would have been bye bye kitty. Cas is the greatest pet a person could ask for, full of personality and love the world would have been worse off without him. The husband and I adopted again recently a kitten named Lilith from certain circumstances and I look at her and wonder how the world can be so cruel so such a lovely little creature. So, thank you Cherie for reminding me that there are people in the world who don’t just look the other way who will go the extra mile for those little four legged friends who can’t help themselves. Love you girl.

  9. Vivian Perry
    August 17th, 2012 @ 5:56 pm

    Thank You ! You , Cherie, are a Force For Good in our Lives! Today, Danie, is Black Cat Appreciation Day! Good on you for adopting one of these fabulous creatures. I’ve owned six myself…

    Bless you Cherie!

  10. Martha Wells
    August 17th, 2012 @ 6:07 pm

    I’m all sniffly too. So glad you were able to save her.

  11. Jenn Chushcoff
    August 17th, 2012 @ 7:27 pm

    And you think you didn’t write anything today?! This is an excellent story. It has build up/discovery, mystery, drama, heartbreak, poetry (child’s winter mitten) and a denouement with a happy ending. See?

    The image of the injured kitty with the french fries at her feet. Ugh. That one line says so many things.

    (thank you for rescuing the kitty)

  12. Benjamin
    August 17th, 2012 @ 7:50 pm

    Ack! So super weepy now, such beauty ultimately! Our household tends to be more dog oriented… But that kitty melted my heart. Bravo to ya’ll for your caring. And hugs and gentle petting to the little one.

  13. Rhiannon
    August 17th, 2012 @ 9:11 pm

    You just made me all weepy. Thank god for the good people is all I have to say.

    I had lunch plans aborted twice on save the baby squirrel missions. The hubby is both cooperative and now strangely reluctant to walk through our neighbourhood when we’re food bound.

  14. Krishna
    August 17th, 2012 @ 10:58 pm

    This sounds close to how my cat Booger came into my life. My wife was at her job doing pet food demos at the local pet store. When someone came in with a small half dead kitten they had found thrown in the trash. Not knowing what to do they brought it to the store. The manager knew that we had been fostering cats for a local rescue group and asked her to take it home. She then called me at home to make up a carrier with a heating pad as she was bringing a kitten home to die. As she drove home to drop off our patient. I got the box and some formula ready. When I saw this little grey Tabby for the first time , i thought “I will just be making her last few hours on this Earth as loving and comfortable as I can”. I got a warm wash cloth out and started cleaning off her goopy eyes. As I was feeding her a bottle of warm formula she started purring. I immediately called my wife and told her “I don’t think this cat is going to die she’s purring”. Well that was nine years ago, she adopted me and is my constant companion. And the name Booger came from the six months of upper respiratory that caused her to blow snot on everything.

  15. Nettle Greenman
    August 17th, 2012 @ 11:17 pm

    Well, you DID get writing done…you wrote this. :->

    I don’t know how people can just drop off kittens. This story reminds me of when I was a little kid, I was working at my grandfather’s luncheonette (a kind of business that doesn’t exist in major urban areas anymore) on a freezing winter day, when the door opened and a kittensicle blew inside. Literally–frozen. Its, or as it turned out, his eyes weren’t open. My family said, “Oh my god, a dead kitten.” But I grabbed him and put him in my shirt, and after a while he started moving. Long story, fought to keep him in my house with my phobic mother, first in a box, then in the bathtub, then in the bathroom. I named him Tiny. I still remember his first meal out of a bowl rather than a dropper–he drank so much milk he looked like a kitten balloon. Tiny eventually grew into a 30-pound tom and Phobic Mom made me give him away, where he went to live in the factory next to Grandpa’s luncheonette and lived his life as Terror of Mice and The Impregnanator. (Hey, it was 1966, and no one in East New York had heard of neutering.)

  16. Cyndy Otty
    August 18th, 2012 @ 3:58 am

    So glad you found her and truly thrilled she has a home to go to already.

    And that face is just too cute for words!

  17. catfriend
    August 18th, 2012 @ 4:57 pm

    Ya gotta wonder about people. This reminds me of the time many years ago when my mother and I were driving through Stockton CA and my mother blurted out “That’s a KITTEN!” at what looked to me like a piece of tire as I drove by. She insisted it was indeed a kitten. I got off the freeway and looped back. We pulled to the side, and I hopped out and picked up a tiny black kitten. Some ____ had thrown her out of a car window. I don’t get how people can do things like that, or how you found this kitten. To make a long story short she was traumatized for life, and lost an eye, but still made an excellent pet for many, many years. I’m glad your kitten will have a happy ending as well.

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