Kitty Surgery

There was a point in the surgery where I had to leave the make-shift operating table in our living room and take a few deep breathes with my head between my knees in our bedroom.
This is what you get when you place two animal-loving westerners in a country with more stray cats than humans. Well, maybe not more than humans, but there are lot of stray cats here. Pets are a function of economics and this country is just, as our emergency vet said, beginning the “fad” of having animals in the house.
We, on the other hand, have decided we would take in the vulnerable, which has meant the runt of one litter, one with an injured eye and smoker’s cough, the mother of a helpless litter and now a friendly tri-colored kitten with a hole in her side the diameter of a good size coin, you pick the currency. Tri-colored cats, we now know thanks to our vet, are always female. Something in their genetics says only females come in three colors.
So now we’re nursing Clownface, named such because of her peculiar white face, back to health. We’re not sure how she came across this huge gash in her side, but every night it has to be injected with an antibiotic fluid, which means Annah and I have to force feed her .10 mg of a mild sedative. The sedative causes her to walk as if she’s had half a bottle of mild whiskey, and then we hold her for the injection.
Keeping pets is a strange and privileged experience we take for granted in the wealthy parts of the world, but I’m damn happy my little money can go a long way to helping some of these cute furry critters live a healthier and longer life, even if it is on the streets.
If any of you are interested in helping Jordan take care of their animals, please check out these folks at the Human Center for Animal Welfare and give a few dollars if you can. The surgery we just did on Clownface was about $20, which in the US would be well over $200, so you can imagine how far your money will go.