Jeana’s Journal

Most of the time life sails along as I had planned and everything seems in order, and then, suddenly, out of seemingly innocent circumstances there is a major change of pace. Beginning last Friday I experienced such an event.

Let me preface this by saying what I have said before, “I don’t particularly like cats.” I would prefer to own none, well except for my companion cat, whom I have talked about before. But, in all honesty we have three or four other cats (depending on if you count the neighbor’s cat who lives on our back porch). We came to have the other three above-mentioned cats innocently enough.

Three years ago, while living in another town, we stupidly fed three hungry-looking half-grown cats who had been dumped in our neighborhood. We only fed these cats because we had a few cans of cat food hanging around from when our 18-year-old cat had died a few months earlier. (Lesson No. 1 WHEN YOUR CAT DIES, THROW AWAY ANY LEFTOVER CAT FOOD.) The stray cats were greatly appreciative of the canned food and we bought a little dry cat food while we looked for their owner.

Two of the three fattened up quickly and then we discovered the reason—they were both pregnant! A few short weeks later the two females had liters of six kittens each. Our cat population ballooned from none to sixteen cats. It turns out that they were kittens from a neighborhood feral cat, who joined the group being fed at our back door because the fools living at our house were giving out free cat food regularly. (Lesson No. 2. FEED NO CAT OUTSIDE YOUR BACK DOOR.)

To make a very long story short that population dwindled to three by the time we moved here. We worked very hard to find them homes and spay and neuter the ones that we could not get rid of. The three have been living quite happily in our garage and venturing outdoors regularly.

Now to the present. Last Thursday night the garage door was left open all night. When my husband drove to the grocery store Friday morning, unbeknownst to him, one of the cats made the trip with him. It was the biggest cat (14 pounds) and the biggest “chicken” of them all. A short time later my husband called me from the grocery store and asked me to come and help him corral the cat and bring it home.

A few minutes later I arrived with a cat carrier in hand. My husband pried the yowling cat out from under a very patient elderly couple’s truck. (They stood by quietly watching the circus). As soon as the cat was dislodged I picked up the frightened cat. (Lesson No. 3 NEVER PICK UP A FRIGHTENED CAT.) In short order he had clawed and chewed himself loose from my arms. My husband then picked him up and got similar treatment. The last we saw of the cat as we drove toward the hospital was his backside disappearing around the side of the grocery store.

Several hours later I left the hospital with four stitches in a cut the size and shape of the end of an Exacto knife on the palm of my right hand, and treatment for about fifteen additional puncture wounds. By now my hand looked more like a club shaped like a baseball. My husband had fewer punctures and no cuts and he is healing nicely with no other treatment that a good cleaning of his wounds.

I am healing nicely too, but my hand sewing has been placed very far to the “back burner” and I am spending lots of time trying to figure out how to do things–like work–with only one and one-half hand. The one bright light in all of this is that I am left-handed, so the one hand I do have is very efficient.

I have debated about posting a photo of my wounded hand and have decided against it. It is not a very pretty sight, just picture four punctures (with one of them torn) where the big incisor teeth bit down on the outside edge of my palm, and a large variety of other punctures on the last two fingers of that same hand.

A week from now the stitches will be out, my hand won’t look like something out of a horror movie, and best of all I will be happily hand stitching every morning.

P.S. For your cat lovers out there—about the cat—we are still trying to find him. We have delivered flyers to all of the nearby houses and posted notices in stores and on electrical poles, but it does not look hopeful. Our towns are all so small that Animal Control deals only with dogs, so they will be no help. Maybe he will find his way home on his own, it is only a few miles from here to where we last saw him.