Other Pirates

There is some concern that I will have to stop writing if, indeed, Jack finds a new home.  Never fear, my life is full of pirates, past, present and future.  Jack, by the way, is doing really well upstairs in his room.  I've taken a few people in to introduce them and he has warmed right up to them.  He's lonely, though, and I wish he didn't have to be alone so much.  I try to sit with him every day for awhile--much to the chagrin of my main pirate, Zuza. 

She's really the captain of the ship.  I'm sitting at Starbucks right now, so I can go online, and she is sleeping on my chest, tucked in my sweatshirt.  For those of you who are far away, Zuza is a Prague Ratter and is the pup peeking over my shoulder in my profile picture.  She and her brother, Lukas, just turned 5 in February.  Luke stays at Briar Patch when I'm at the PT business because he has waaayyy too much to say and is indefatigable.  ("Hey!  There's someone in the parking lot!  Hey!  Someone is going to the bathroom!  Hey!  The door bell rang!  Hey!  Do you want to play with something?  Look!  I gotta squeaky duck here. Squeak Squeak Squeak Squeak...")  She, on the other hand, sleeps happily in a bed with a heated snugly unless she feels it necessary to join the client on the table, where she will curl up on their thighs, oozing sweetness and cuteness and warmth.  She weighs 3lbs10oz and I hold her 3/4 of the day.  When she was just 11 weeks old she broke her left elbow, and even though she had a very successful surgery, the screw broke 2 months later and she now has a permanently broken left foreleg.  So other than the fact that I carried her in a pouch for 2 months, she is unaffected by her disability.  She runs, she kills rodents stupid enough to come into a house with 2 ratter dogs and EIGHT cats (you have to know that we are thinning the herd of all the really dumb rodents).

And why is she a pirate?  Why are all of them pirates?  They board our ships and take possession of all we have and then they direct all we're going to do.  And then, like Captain Jack Sparrow or the guy that Orlando Bloom played--(I don't care, he played Legolas the elf in the Lord of the Rings and I will love him forever)--they steal our hearts as well and we feel that we can't possibly live without them.

I forgot, I was going to try to link to Briar Patch.  Here goes....briarpatchvet.com

Oooh, that was easy.  You can read all about Jack and see some pictures there in the Newletter.

One-Eyed Jack, Part Two

Today Jack is smacking lady bugs that have started to wake up and crawl up the wall behind the couch.  I have to get him a scratching post and bring him some toys from home.  Now that he isn't hiding all of the time, he wants some interesting stuff to do.

Oh, I have to correct one fact about Jack--they removed his left eye, not his right.  Just a little dyslexic/laterality problem I have.  Be glad that I'm not a surgeon.

Part 2 of his story is that he was the first Katrina kitty adopted, mostly because of the story that ran in the the Ithaca Journal.  A really wonderful couple adopted him because they already had a one-eyed cat and were worried that he would not get a home.  He lived with them until recently, when they moved to a smaller place and were worried that this would be too stressful for him.  They have other pets, (at least one dog and a couple of cats, if I remember correctly) and he was already having some trouble living with them. 

So, he came back to us and now I have to learn the lessons he has come here to teach.  We are looking for a forever home for him, one where he will be an only child.  He actually hasn't had any reaction to the animals that he has come in contact with at Briar Patch, so maybe that isn't written in stone.  I was in here yesterday with Zuza (my teeny dog) tucked in my jacket and I'm not sure if Jack even knew what she was.  They touched noses and he just looked confused, but unconcerned, and continued to rub up against me and purr.  I have learned to love him.

So, that's Jack's story for now. 

One-Eyed Jack, Part One

So, here I am with my first post.  I wanted to start this a couple of weeks ago when I started posting Jack's progress everyday on Facebook.  I meet the most amazing animals at Briar Patch, especially, but really everywhere I go.  And they all have lessons to teach.  I am humbled by their courage and willingness to love even when life has given them very little reason to trust anyone.

Jack is a survivor of the Katrina chaos.  Found with his feral mother in the backyard of a shelter worker's home in New Orleans, he was taken to a house where all of the sick were deposited.  Like every one of the Katrina kitties we fostered, he had a raging eye infection (and parasites, and upper respiratory problems.)  In fact, his infection was so bad that they removed his right eye.  So he lived for weeks with people dosing him with eye ointment and who knows what else, with twenty or more other kittens who had been scooped out of the waters after the hurricane.  He learned friendship and trust from another kitten, Katie, who is a miracle in herself.  And then he got transported here in a cage, in the back of a moving truck with 11 other cats and kittens and a large number of dogs.  And then he comes to Briar Patch where he is housed for a couple of months with Katie and a bunch of cats he's never seen before. 

Okay, that's part one of Jack's story.  I'll give you a preview of the ongoing tale by telling you that he is sleeping on the little couch next to me in his private room at Briar Patch.  I can't help loving him as he rattles with purrs--and trusts me--even while he deals with his fears.

Amazing, simply amazing.