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LinLin030988

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Third person retelling of myexperience raising Scamp.. And none of it's exaggerad or anything.. and yes, it's kinda boring, cause I reread after finishing.. lol, just a little lame.. -tiny bit-

"Wow, how could the little guy get so bad off?" she thought, staring at the kitten doddering around after his litter mates.  She could clearly visualize the baby version of the little malnurished kitten, how tiny he was, the fact that he was even born brown when she assumed he was supposed to be black.  At the point of three months after his birth, give or take a few days, he was half the size of his brothers and sisters.  The small bony creature watched and tried to keep up, but even moving must have been exhausting. 

The girl was sitting on the front steps, throwing tiny pebbles for the other kittens to chase, and attempting to help the runty kitten make it up the steps.  After making it to the top the little guy sat down, and settled for watching with his good eye.  His other eye was swollen so badly that he couldn't shut it, three times or better the size it should be, with a large scab covering the outside of the eye. 

Lin watched sadly, knowing the little guy would die, and when her Gran called for her she left the kitten at the foot of the steps so he might not fall at least.  The kitten's littermates and he were going to the pound- nine cats were way too many for an elderly woman to keep up with.  After making the decision just to send off the kittens, her Grandma was reluctant to take the pathetic little brown kitten.

"They'll only put him to sleep, he's too unhealthy, at least he can die somewhere he knows with his momma cat." Gran said, watching as her granddaughter adjusted the egg box they were carrying the kittens in. 

A drive 30 miles to the nearest animal shelter, and then back they were, and before leaving her Gran, Lin looked back, and watched the kitten wobble around, stumbling and falling.  The eye scared her more than anything- it was so scabbed she couldn't tell where the pupil was.

Upon returning home, she told her parents about what happened.

"And the little guy looked so bad, I'm sure he'll die.  She actually tried to push his eye back into his head!" she finished with a disgusted expression.

"Why don't you try to doctor him, see if you can help him?" her Mom said, promptly getting up to go rummage around in the drug cabinet.

"I'm not driving all the way over there every day to tend to him.  He'll probably die anyway." 

But after her Mom pushed it a little more, Lin decided to go get the kitten.  Twenty minutes later she was on her way home, holding the shivering kitten in her lap, being careful not to bump his eye or listen to the music too loud.

Getting him home, she noticed the kitten was flea ridden, she could see them roving and scurrying around through his dry thin fur.  Despite her worst thoughts for how painful it would be, she decided that he'd be better off after a warm bath since it'd get rid of the fleas.

She cleaned him, dried him, and fixed the pettaxi for him a place to sleep and stay til he got used to the house. 

For three days he barely moved, only getting up to go to the bathroom or eat.  After a week the kitten's eye ruptured.  Lin woke up and was scared to see that he had blood all over his face, so after cleaning it off and feeding him, she was able to peel the scab off: Now he could blink, and the pussy pink mass left after the scab could barely be called an eye.  Still, he felt better after it had popped, and began to scamper around, looking as though he were only a week old, still with hardly any meat on his bones.  She watched sadly as he tottered around, each bone visible on his ribs, even after a solid week of steady three times a day feeding til his belly protruded.

After two weeks his fur began to grow out black where it had been brown all his life, now starting to contrast even more sharply with his white markings.  He had earned the name Scamp, since after being able to move without a constant pain from the swollen eye he had never stopped scampering about the house.  Sadly the eye got bad again, and after another week, he was built up enough that he could have it removed.  Another week later, four weeks after Lin had went to retrieve Scamp, it was time to have his stitches taken out.  He was still severly undersized, very petite by usual cat standards.  Finally after all that trouble she was proud to say that yes, he was healthy.  His coat had gathered a luster that she'd never seen on another cat, and his personality was finally revealed completely after his health had been restored.  Though still bony, he was healthier than she could have imagined.

At six months old it was time to get him neutered, so he wouldn't spray all over the house (Lin had decided that he would be a housecat for the remainder of his life.)  Lin and her father carried him to the pound on the morning his appointment had been made for, and were told where the animals were operated on- a clinic in the city instead of at the shelter itself.   They were told to come back for him at four in the afternoon, that they could take him home that same day.  It was a mark of how much pain he must have been in as a kitten when they got him home and he immedately started bounding around the house, actually running into the wall, hitting it with enough force to fall backwards on his recently operated-on backside.  He merely got back up and kept going as though it hadn't happened.

(After I started writing that I wished I had told it from first person.. it's kinda lame, but oh well.  That's what happened to him, and as you might be able to tell from his pictures he's a very healthy cat now, shiny and active, well behaved, and extremely spoiled.  I'm so glad I didn't just bill him as a done deal as a baby, cause he's a major source of pride and happiness in my life.  Of course he's still a midget, lol, but that's fine with me, since he's a house cat. -he's scared to go outside, he runs away every time the door's open and hides in another room.-)