No Good Deed Shall Go Unpunished

It has taken me a week to write about this, because it is so upsetting. Most of you know that there are numerous cats at the farm at any given time. Growing up on the farm and being so isolated, my cats were my best friends, and more times than often my only friends. When I was young, I would dress them up in baby clothes or Cabbage Patch clothes, sneak them upstairs to my room without my mom knowing, feed them milk from bottles. I related to my friends through my cats, endlessly making Heather and Natalie or Sara play with me and the cats. I even had cat circuses and sold tickets for a nickel to family members.

Animals (and sometimes people) get minimal attention at the farm. Cats get pregnant every spring, and kittens are born every May or June. Every year when I was young I would scour the barn or other sheds looking for my new friends. There was always a new crop. Any of our neighbors that accidently ended up with kittens always found a way to sneak them to our house. There are two sounds that I can pick out anywhere, sounds that are ingrained into my being; one is the sound of a bassoon, the other is a kitten's meow. It wasn't until I got older that I started to question the amount of cats at the farm. Not that I didn't love every single one of them, and try to give them the best life possible, but I saw more than my share of cats ran over on the road, or played with too rough by the dogs, or just moved on to a better home. I gave a few away, and that always warmed my heart.

Last Thursday I took three cats to the vet to be spayed. This was such a huge deal because no cat on the farm had ever gotten any medical attention; no shots, no stitches, no vitamins. We had one tom cat, Larry, that would show up with a dislocated hip on more than one occassion, and the next time you saw him, he'd be back all together again. The vet has a sale on spading every February, and after we had a kitten fiasco (be very happy if you didn't hear that story) last summer, I talked dad into splitting the cost of spaying a few cats. I had three girl cats that I could catch that I decided to spay. There are still at least two other female cats on the farm that I couldn't catch and spay. Of the three cats, one was older, maybe at least 7, her name was Sarah. I named her after Sarah McLachlan because she had such a melodic beautiful meow. The other two were Sarah's daughters from last year, Cassandra, and Black Kitty (Black Kitty still needs a real name.) They did great when I dropped them off at the vet in the morning. I called the vet around 1 p.m. to check on them, and they still seemed drowsy. When Lesa came to pick them up in the evening, Sarah was still drowsy, so the vet decided to keep her overnight. Then the vet called me at home last Thursday night and told me Sarah passed away. Apparently she had a bad reaction to the anesthetics. They tried to give her medicine to wake her up, then performed CPR, then she died. I feel so bad for her, she had such beautiful, friendly babies every year. I guess I should have just let her be. =( I never expected for her to die. The doctor said this very rarely happens, and he did all he could. I don't think it was his fault. I'm trying to convince myself that it wasn't my fault either.

On a good note, Cassandra and Black Kitty are doing fine. They have to go back next week to get their stitches out. One thing that did make me happy was when the tom cat (whose name is Bella (thought he was a girl at first)) tried to mate with Cassandra already, so we weren't a moment too soon. Ha ha, buddy, not this year!