Have You Ever Felt Like This?
“All suffering originates from craving, from attachment, from desire.” -Edgar Allan Poe [1]
This handsome gentleman is Elrond. He’s now nine years old and then some. But there was a time he almost didn’t make it past 6.
This is his story.
It’s no secret around our neighborhood that we are the ‘crazy cat people’. We not only have nine inside kitties but help the neighborhood strays.
How do we help them?
- Twice a day feedings with canned food plus dry (and not the cheap stuff, either). In a heated bowl in winter.
- Fresh water twice a day. In a similar heated bowl in winter.
- Warming houses for the cold weather.
- An open-just-a-crack shed with straw inside for protection and warmth.
- Treats from the back of my SUV where a container sits full of cat food and goodies…for those emergency situations.
- Toys, mostly of the catnip variety.
- Regular love and attention.
- And we give them temporary outdoor names…I’ll get to the name thing, don’t worry.
Yeah, word gets around. We have neighbors across the street who, we think, must have been MI5 at one time. Maybe they’re still active, we don’t ask.
My point is, like “Cheers,” everybody knows our name.
So it came as no surprise when three-plus years ago, in a blisteringly cold January here in NE Ohio, a large grey and white cat showed up and began using our services. He didn’t even have a reservation…the nerve.
His limp was fairly obvious and caused us some concern, but it was cold, he may have gotten ice underfoot. Besides, he ate well and commandeered one of the larger warming houses. So he seemed to be adjusting, sort of.
Still, I — yes, mostly I…because I’m an animal empath if there is such a thing — was worried about him. He was slow, with the limp becoming more pronounced. Therefore, I began mentioning to my wife my desire to rescue him and how he’d fit into the ‘pride’ inside. Hey, that rhymed!
And then it happened.
On a cold Saturday in late February. We were just getting home from grocery shopping. I walked onto the porch and there he was. I looked down and noticed, for the first time, he had no claws on his front paws. He wasn’t just a stray. He had had a home once upon a time. Or at least a house.
Now, we don’t declaw. It is cruel and the word is starting to spread about just how cruel it is. How it handicaps many cats. Think of it as removing your fingers at the last knuckle. How would that be? Besides, they scratch NOT to sharpen their claws but because their paws have scent glands that help them know and interact with their environment better (see two of my other articles here on Medium).
“What is declawing?
Too often, people think that declawing is a simple surgery that removes a cat’s nails — the equivalent of having your fingernails trimmed. Sadly, this is far from the truth.
Declawing traditionally involves the amputation of the last bone of each toe. If performed on a human being, it would be like cutting off each finger at the last knuckle.
It is an unnecessary surgery that provides no medical benefit to the cat. Educated pet parents can easily train their cats to use their claws in a manner that allows everyone in the household to live together happily.” — [2]
This has been SOAPBOX by John Woolf.
At last, he came inside and we put him in a room by himself so as to introduce him safely to our other cats. You never just throw one into the mix…trust me. [3] He was warm and safe, and I made a vet appointment on Monday to get his vaccinations and blood work and to see if he belonged to anyone else. All was going well. And then…
Devastation
Have you ever had your heart ripped out right before your eyes? Your guts trampled and mangled? I have.
Our vet told me that he was between six and seven years of age; he had arthritis in his hips; the front claws had been removed poorly leaving him forever sore there, and this soreness had been worsened by slight frostbite he had gotten being out in the terrible elements when not accustomed to it.
And that was the good news.
Enter the tech. Elizabeth is our favorite vet tech. She knows her stuff and has been with us through some hard times — like when we lost our dog to cancer. She’s good, and she knows how much we care for these animals.
So, when she came in, I knew something was wrong. It had taken far too long to get the blood work completed, longer than usual. She read off the litany of results and they were all fine. Then she said that he tested positive with FeLV. Feline Leukemia. One of the worst things any cat owner can hear. [4]
I breathed…eventually. And when I did I told her that there was no question we would fight it tooth and nail. You never give up on family, right, Lilo? And he was family now. Once he crossed over that threshold and into our house, he was one of us.
See why we’re known so well in our little urban jungle?
Elizabeth said they had taken enough blood to send it off to an outside lab for verification, so they didn’t have to draw more right now. It would take a couple of days. The vet also told me that it is possible for a cat to beat this infection if his immune system is up to it and if detected early. (Gee, good thing he hadn’t been outside in the cold…doh!) She said to feed him good food and try and keep him stress-free.
Oh, and he had to stay quarantined until we knew for sure. Cats don’t pass FeLV in just one meet-and-greet. They give it over a span of up to two weeks with contact and using the same water or food bowls and litter boxes as the contact cats. According to Cornell’s Feline Health Center: “FeLV does not survive long outside a cat’s body — probably less than a few hours under normal household conditions.” [4]
You WILL have a name!
I don’t usually cry much, let alone blubber like Hagrid into his giant spotted handkerchief. Sorry, huge Harry Potter fan. Read the books eight times now, on top of the movies. But I cried all the way home — from the vet, not the movies — and the tears continued once we were home.
I made a promise to him:
“You won’t be a statistic, you will have a name. And your name is Elrond.”
Each of our own cats has a Lord of the Rings name. Yep, read those books multiple times, too. Even the Silmarillion and all of Christopher Tolkien’s work.
But enough about me.
Elrond he was named. He was family, and hopefully, Stitch taught us about the importance of that.
Test, Test, Everywhere a Test
The call from the lab came two days later when I was at work. They had gotten a Negative result. What did this mean, I asked? It meant that his body had been exposed to the virus and it had entered his bloodstream but hadn’t yet replicated and taken over the show.
A small light flickered across the black canvas of my mind. Aren’t I poetic? Maybe I should try writing. I’ll think about it.
So, I spoke with our vet who said we’d retest in one month. If Elrond got a Negative test again, he beat it and was in the clear.
Tick-tock-tick-tock…the days went by excruciatingly slow that month. And we prayed and gave him all the love, attention, and good food we could buy. He lived like a king (not that he wouldn’t have already). Did I really want that month to ever end? Did he?
But it did and the retest time came. They drew his blood and off it went. (Our bills were adding up with each of these, but I would’ve sold a kidney to help him. Of course, my kidneys are more Diet Mountain Dew than kidneys at this point.) What would we do if it was positive? Keep fighting to the bitter end. That’s what. But…
…NEGATIVE!
Yep. Negative. That word has such a ‘negative connotation’ much of the time. But it was the sweetest word in the world to me. No virus, no FeLV nightmare, no more quarantine. Elrond was going to be okay. Sure, he had other issues, but NO feline leukemia.
The sun shone brightly in my thoughts. (Not nearly as poetic, but still true, all the same.)
“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” [5]
― Mark Twain
Or in this case: the cat.
The time had come to leave his small bedroom prison and join the gang. We were prepared for some fighting, which is natural. But when Elrond was first introduced to the pride, he stood there, looked at all of them for a moment, then laid down right beside them. That was all there was to it. Usually, these things have multiple attempts and some paw slapping and growling. And that’s if you’ve done everything right! But he just laid down like he owned the place. God! I love that cat!
Looking Back
Those three-plus years have gone by so quickly and both good and bad things have happened in all of our lives. Who would’ve guessed the words: “Quarantine” and “Negative test” would mean so much to millions of people today?
As for Elrond, he still has arthritis and some remaining pain in his front claws. His hearing is going a little. And he sometimes gets seizures with great stress-events like going to the vet. Can you blame him? But he’s become a chubby, happy housecat. He’s got a real home. Real owners. And a name.
It’s ELROND.
Postscript:
We finally pieced together what may have happened to lead Elrond — our miracle kitty — to our doorstep. And it is a sad commentary on the human race.
Elrond’s owners gave him a bad declawing (is there a good kind?) which left him with sore front paws and could’ve led to his arthritis in his hips. Compensation and all that, you see.
Then, at a vet visit or because he was around another cat with a known FeLV diagnosis, they believed he had the virus. So, what to do? Go to the vet and try to save his life? No. Drop him off near the house where all the cats are fed and hope he makes it? Good luck, [insert his previous name here]!
And, voila! Elrond’s origin story now ready for Comic Superhero stardom.
- John T. Woolf
[1] https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.azquotes.com%2Fquote%2F877650
[3] https://www.paws.org/resources/introducing-cat-to-cat/
[5] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/14351-it-s-not-the-size-of-the-dog-in-the-fight#:~:text=Quotes%20%3E%20Quotable%20Quote-,%E2%80%9CIt's%20not%20the%20size%20of%20the%20dog%20in%20the%20fight,the%
