The Day Fate Stepped In
My daughter told me this story about KitKat’s rescue. I can only write her stories in the first person. I’ve tried writing her stories in a different manner but for some reason the words just are not the same and the story doesn’t read the way I think it should. This story has an unusual twist for an ending for this cat is so loved by my daughter and the love is mutual.
About five years ago I was working at a large multi veterinarian clinic. For some inexplicable reason, this clinic had more than its share of challenging cases that were accompanied by the most bizarre stories. During our rare breaks, my fellow veterinarians and I often mulled over the strange cases, that came through the heavy doors.
Midway through my already weary day, a woman rushed into the clinic carrying a tiny kitten in one hand. She told the receptionist that she had been out jogging and the kitten had fallen out of a tree. A very strange story! How did a tiny kitten climb a tree? I don’t think that the kitten had actually fallen out of the tree. The jogger just happened to find the kitten at the base of the tree or maybe the kitten really belonged to the woman and it had somehow been injured. As she handed the kitten over to our receptionist, she said, “I hate cats and I’m not going to pay for its treatment!” With those parting words she made a bee -line for the door, gave it a shove and was gone in a New York minute. Our receptionist rushed the tiny ball of fur to the back and then handed her to me. The kitten was a tiny, limp, and pathetic looking bit of dull grayish blue fur that fit in the palm of my hand. I gave it a hasty exam and noted that is was a female, severely dehydrated and in a non-responsive coma. Clearly this was a rescue case and one that I saw as totally hopeless. I saw no hope for a tiny kitten that was barely clinging to life and looked as if it would die within minutes. And I reasoned, if by some miracle it lived, I simply could not afford to spend anymore money trying to save it’s life. I had just rescued two other cats that had cost me a great deal of money. Each one had needed a surgical specialist and even though their surgeries, medications, treatments, etc. were discounted, these rescues had put a deep hole in my wallet.