I received a phone call from the shelter on Friday afternoon wondering if I could pick up Wren. He's sick, she said. Upper respiratory.
A simple cold can be a death sentence for a cat at the shelter, where there is little room to treat an illness for a few weeks while the sweetie gets better. Of course, I went and picked him up right away. I had dropped him off a week and a half before that, thinking he would go for surgery and then be adopted.
Well, that poor baby was crying, and had ringworm in four or five places, and a few fleas, and a cold, and his eyes were all crusty and swollen. And he was dehydrated and hungry. I thought, good golly, what have you guys been doing with this poor baby for ten days? He hadn't gained one ounce! I went and checked in the kitten cottage, and everybody there was fat, happy, and healthy. I just decided Wren has delicate sensibilities...a "Prince and the Pea" type situation had developed, and he needed some good loving in a proper home.
Luckily, I had my carrier in the car that afternoon, and so I scooped up Wren and started driving home. Within a few blocks, he was scratching at the carrier door and reaching his poor little paw out as far as it would go and meowing and meowing. At the next stop light, I unlatched the gate, and that pitiful orphan leaped into my lap and started rolling like a crocodile, over-and-over-and-over. Purr, purr, purr, said Wren, and he was practically saying: "I thought you'd NEVER come back!"
So, we got home, and he ran right to where the food goes when it's time to eat. I put out a tin of chicken, and he wolfed down a bunch of it, drank for a while from the communal water bowl, everybody gave him a good sniff, and then it was bath time. I used a couple different types of soap, then dried him off in a big old towel. And I put ointment on his ringworm (which isn't really a worm...it's a fungal skin condition). And I cleaned out his ears really well and scrubbed all the crusties out of his eyes. I picked the fleas off his belly. We all loved on that kitten for the next few hours, and he curled up in bed next to Steve that night, and wouldn't you know it, he already looks good-as-new.
We'll have Wren for another week while he finishes his antibiotic, and then I'm hoping a Facebook campaign will help him find a home, so he can skip going back to kitty "jail." He just likes to be pampered, that's all. He's going to be a big old orange cat who likes to sleep on laps, and I know he'll make someone a wonderful pet. How lucky we get to borrow him for a little while longer.
(P.S. If you want to see what Wren looks like, take a peek at my previous blog post.)
And this is Isolde. She walked into our house last night, checked out the joint, then found a nice spot on Steve's lap while he watched Storage Wars. She's very lean and lanky and is kind of a seal point/tabby mix -- silver with blue eyes. She loves to knead her tiny little feet on anything soft, and she spent the night resting comfortably on the pillow in our guest room.
