Tonight my friend Stewart and I looked out on the porch and thought we saw Scaredy Cat. "It looks like a little black cat," Stewart said. Walking out on the porch, I realized it was the neighbor cat, Frankie. "Does he only have one eye?" Stewart asked. He held out a finger for the normally unfriendly Frankie, who sniffed it calmly, and as we got a closer look at him, we realized that he was in serious trouble.
Frankie's eye was swollen and bulging out of his head. You could no longer see any iris or pupil, but only a brownish tissue covering his eye socket. A slight amount of blood and ooze leaked from around the base of the eye, and dripped onto his whiskers. "Oh my god. We'd better get him to an emergency clinic," I said. Frankie looked dusty and thin, but watched us calmly. " Can you pick him up?"
Stewart brought him inside the house, while I nervously phoned the West Alabama Animal Clinic, and then the after-hours Animal Emergency Clinic that they referred us to. Frankie walked into the bedroom, seemingly undistressed about being inside. It was almost as though, when he'd looked up at us on the porch, he was saying, "Help me." And now he was being cooperative, because he knew he couldn't get out of this mess on his own. He let us pet him on the top of his dusty head. We decided against feeding him because he was about to have surgery, and loaded him into a carrier. He was surprisingly docile during the drive on the freeway to the emergency clinic.
At the emergency clinic, the vet told us that Frankie was extremely dehydrated, and had probably crept off somewhere to hide for a few days after his injury, with no food or water during that time. The vet believed he had been hit by a car, because Frankie also had a fractured jaw, which is a common injury in cats. "He's gonna lose the eye," the vet said, which didn't surprise me. Fortunately, the vet believed that all of the eye's tissue was dead, and it was not giving Frankie pain any more.
After hearing the estimate for emergency surgery on the cat that night, we decided in consulation with the sympathetic vet to give Frankie conservative treatment - fluids for his dehydration and a high dose of antibiotics- and take him to the regular clinic in the morning. Everyone at the Animal Emergency Clinic said that Frankie was a sweet cat. Stewart gave us a ride home and wished the little cat well.
Back home, I let Frankie out in the bathroom, and pet him gently. He began to lick one of his muddy paws in an attempt to groom. "I'll help you, sweetie," I told him. I got some paper towels from the kitchen and ran them under warm water. As I began running a damp paper towel over the black fur on his side, lifting off dust and shed fur, Frankie began to knead his paws in a kittenish response. I sat with him for a long time, grooming him, talking to him, and rubbing his tummy. When my husband Gregg came home, terribly upset to see the condition of Frankie's eye, we changed shifts. Gregg swabbed out Frankie's ears, and took him on his lap and brushed him for a long time while I slept.
This morning Frankie went to the regular vet's. The drive over was the first time since he'd shown up on the porch that I heard him make a sound. "Meow, meow," he said. I spent much of the day worrying about him, worrying about how we were going to pay for his treatment, and worrying about where he was going to live after he came back.
After talking to the vet in the afternoon, I felt much better. She said that Frankie would have his surgery tomorrow morning, and was being given more antibiotics to prepare him. "He ate a whole can of food," she said in a pleased voice. She was also willing to work with me on some costs, because she understood that the cat was not a family pet, but a stray that we were taking care of in a crisis. She recommended that Frankie be neutered as long as he was going to be under the knife anyway. We also made arrangements for him to be vaccinated and dewormed - the works. The vet told me that Frankie was a sweet cat.
Yesterday after work I stopped off at the West Alabama Animal Clinic to take a picture of Frankie's grody eye before he underwent surgery. I also dropped off some Advantage so that his fleas would be gone before he came back to our apartment. A veterinary technician brought Frankie into a little room so that I could see him. Although the vet had told me on the phone that she had cleaned up his eye a little, it was oozing again. "Aren't you cute?" I crooned at Frankie while I took his picture. "Even with that ugly eye." He didn't even blink when the flash went off. "He's a sweet cat," the veterinary technician told me.
One of my concerns about Frankie is whether or not this good behavior will last once he's feeling better again. I'd like to find him a permanent home indoors with somebody, but I don't want to turn over an adult feral tomcat to some unsuspecting person. If he begins to get cranky about indoor life and human contact during his convalescence, it might be best just to make him another outdoor driveway cat with Scaredy. But could those two former enemies coexist with their food bowls in the same general area? And could Frankie stay out of trouble with cars with only one eye? At least it wouldn't be as bad as the busy apartment complex parking lot where he must have been living before.
Frankie had his surgery this morning, and comes home on Saturday. We ought to be able to put him up for the required week of nursing, but then he's got to find a home or go back outside, due to our landlord and my allergies.
RESCUE . . .