The Tail Of An Irish Kitty

24/11/05

 

Hey there Fuzzy Furry Friends

OK, This is a departure from our normally immature and irreverant travel logs, because today was a bit of a sad day for us, so we figured we may as well share our gooshy little story with you… It’s really only for catlovers, so if you don’t like cats though, don’t read any further…

Last Sunday night we were driving through a town called Glengariff coming back from sightseeing around the Beara Peninsula in southwest Ireland when I noticed what I thought was a kitten laying on the road right where a car tyre would run.

Because, it was dark, I really wasn’t sure if it was kitten or just a bit of clothing, but after …umming… and …aahing… a bit, we decided to turn around and found that it actually was a small black female kitten about 5 months old that had been hit by a car.

It was curled into a crouching position, and was bleeding heavily from the mouth and nose and not really moving, although we could hear it wheezing and struggling for air…

It was just one of those horrible moments when we weren’t really sure what to do since it looked injured pretty badly, and being visitors to this country, we were deciding whether to take it for help which was going to be awkward for us, kill it and put it out of its misery, or just leave it on the side of the road…

But when we stopped to check it out, it woke up started mewing and then crawled into a ball between my legs…

It looked so sad and cute looking for shelter there, that we decided that we really couldn’t leave it, so we bundled it into the car and started knocking on doors to see if we could find its owner.

Well, unfortunately rural Irish people really aren’t used to people knocking on their door in the night, so I think we freaked most people out, and sadly, no-one was able or willing to help us even though we kept telling people we were tourists and really couldn’t look after it…

It was actually really heartbreaking and upsetting at the time and after about 2 hours of knocking on doors we decided that we had to do the Thunderbirds International Rescue thing and take the kitty the 80km back to the town that we were staying in.

Well at that stage, we had worked out that it seemed OK on the outside, so it seemed to have mainly internal injuries to its throat and head as it was really struggling to breathe…

That night was absolutely horrible as we felt totally helpless since the kitty wanted to sleep, but couldn’t rest it’s head down without choking and coughing blood… And listening to its lungs with my stethoscope, I could hear that it had quite a bit of fluid down there…

And even more heartbreaking, was that even though it was struggling to breathe, every time we put it down, it still tried to crawl onto our laps, as it just wanted to be held and consoled… it definitely brought tears to our eyes…

Anyhows, we really didn’t think it would make it through that first night, but somehow, it just wheezed and gargled through, so the next day we managed to get it to a vet.

We were initially worried that the vet may have opted for the easy solution of putting the kitty down, but the guy we got was really nice and after a quick asthma (bronchodilator) injection, the kitty started to respond and within a few hours she was breathing a lot better!!!

Well, we were overjoyed and really happy, but at the same time, we were really worried as we were leaving for France at the end of the week, and we realised that the kitty still had a lot of trauma around the mouth and would need a lot of love and attention as it would need to be syringe fed for a while.

Anyways, everyone started to tell us that Irish people are generally dog people and it would be next to impossible to find the owners of a lost cat as there were so many strays around, that most people just figured that one less cat was no big deal.

Well, we could smell a faint perfume smell on the kitty, so we figured that it must have had an owner, so that night after work, I drove the 160km round trip back to the town that we found it and put up signs everywhere on the telegraph posts.

The next couple of days were a bit tough as the kitty was really hungry, but couldn’t eat without choking, and we also realised that it must have had concussion as it was doing weird things like falling asleep while sitting up and standing up… it was very funny to watch, but also a bit sad…

Amazingly though, over 4 days, the kitty made a really rapid recovery and other than the odd choking spell, it was pretty much back to normal.

Well, we were just getting used to having this really cute kitty sleeping on our laps and curling up to sleep on our shoulder, when one morning, we got a phone call… It was the OWNER…!!!

Well, not quite… the owner was away and a friend of hers had been feeding the kitty and hadn’t really realised it was missing until she saw my sign outside her house…

…So today we drove back to the town and handed the kitty back… And it really broke our hearts…

The kitty had been purring away on Avril’s lap the whole way there, but unfortunately, we handed it over on a main street, so it freaked out completely with the traffic noises and was really scared… We felt really bad and actually went back to our car and had a bit of a cry…

Unfortunately, nursing it back to life meant we got really attached to it, and we could tell that it had adopted us as well as it would study our faces and it really looked like it was showing us gratitude as it would snuzzle its face against ours…

But although we obviously saved its life, we realised that the kitty had given us a gift too…

Up until now, although we have enjoyed the touring around and seeing Ireland, we hadn’t really felt settled and it was getting us down a bit…

I think we were feeling a bit lonely and home sick as we really haven’t been in one place long enough to meet people our age or mentality to just hang out with and we’ve found most B&Bs are so much more boring and lifeless than backpacker joints…

So having a warm furry kitty curled up and purring on our lap in front of the fireplace and having a fluffy ball of joy come and greet us every time we came into the room was sooooo nice and homely and it really gave us a nice fuzzy warm feeling inside… it was the best gift that the kitty could have given us…

Thanks kitty… we’ll miss you heaps… goosh…

I’m sure this is what it feels like when doves cry… …oops, I think I just got so choked up typing that, that I dribbled snot out of my left nostril onto the keyboard…

Anyway, we took some pics of the kitty right from when we found her to when we said goodbye so you can see how much of a miraculous recovery she made… so the pics are here at Irish Kitty Pics.

Lots of Love and kitten snuzzles

Ced and Avril
International Kitty Rescue

PS. The owner actually did sound really nice, so I hope she’s gone back to a nice warm cosy house

PPS. On a completely different note… for all you guys who love the big nude painting in our bedroom… the artist is an amazing up and coming artist called Celeste Chandler and the nudes are actually self portraits…

Anyhows, our good friend Bruce Heiser (Bubble Wrap Boy at our Superhero Party) currently has an exhibition of Celeste Chandler’s new work at his gallery in New Farm, which will be showing until 3rd December.

The pictures are absolutely beautiful and you can check some of them out at this link, www.heisergallery.com.au and go to the current exhibitions link. But if you are in Brissy, you should have a wander down and check her out as we absolutely love her work. The address is on the website.