The Life and Death of a Rez Cat

Life on the Navajo rez was hard.  I was always the type of person who was easily moved by others' suffering, both human and animal alike.  So much so that my 4th grade teacher's rather cruel nickname for me was "Fragile" as if it were some fundamental flaw.  If there was one word that I would associate with the Navajo rez, the first word I would think of is "death" and the second, "poverty".  That was the way of the rez for not a day would go by where one wouldn't see the carcasses of wild dogs strewn across the highways.  A sight that I was told that I would someday get hardened to.  I never really did but, instead, hid my distress at the sight by ranking it for gore on a scale of 1-10.  It wasn't so much that people died all the time out there.  Instead, the greatest death toll was in both the cats and dogs that were born out there.  There were diseases that afflicted the animals for which the Navajo had no name, whether it would be the disease that ate all the fur off their bodies or the one that rotted them from the inside until maggots came out of a still living dog.  Then there were the animals themselves, frequently left feral and hungry.  The wild dogs would eat the cats or even each other.  I remember rescuing a puppy out there only to discover that it got out and found itself a carcass of a puppy to chew on.  It horrified me to the bone though it was the way of the rez.

On the day that my cats, Lucky and Gin, were born on the rez, it was nothing more than another typical glimpse of that brutal world.  They were part of a litter that had been given birth to in the parking lot or perhaps had been immediately dumped there by the cat's owner.  Hard to say but there the litter of 6 were left in a small pile within the parking lot of an office building.  All day long, the employees working inside clucked and pitied the mewing and dying kittens; yet, none did a thing to try to save them.  Survival for such an occurrence was an impossibility to the Navajos working there.  The only possible outcome for these kittens was a slow, cold and hungry death.  I didn't hear about the kittens until 5 pm that day when my daughter's father called me to tell me of the horrible sight.  He said that he heard a fierce mewing and sure enough, one of the litter had survived the day in the desert sun.  I demanded that he turn around and bring me the kitten immediately.  In the short time waiting, I found a recipe for emergency kitten formula and went door to door, looking for a infant medicine dropper with which to feed the kitten.  I'll never forget my first sight of Lucky.  His placental sac had never been licked clean and had dried to his fur in a dark brown speckled with clay dust. His umbilical cord was still long and he was a tiny, fragile thing.  I sent my daughter's father straight back out to the grocery store to pick up the supplies to make the kitten formula and immediately started to gently clean Lucky and clip down his cord.  As luck would have it, her father stopped one more time to check on the litter and found one more surviving kitten flopping in distress in the setting sun.  This was Gin and she was perhaps the luckier cat of the two for by the time she came into my care, she was cold. 

Just a few weeks old and already adored.

I spent the rest of the evening, tending to Lucky and Gin's distress.  After they were cleaned and both their cords clipped, I warmed them against my chest before giving them their first meal ever through the baby dropper.  I didn't even think twice about doing any of this or give any thought as to what it truly meant to take on the role of mother to two kittens.  Baby kittens aren't unlike human babies at all.  They needed to be fed every two hours, kept warm constantly, and on top of it all, baby kittens can't defecate and urinate without their mother.  After the first 5 days, I was deeply exhausted and was contemplating possibly giving up. I couldn't do that though because I was poignantly aware what precisely I was to these two kittens--I was the only mother they ever had known and they depended on me for life.  How could betray such tiny things?  My only real choice was to become their mother in return, just as much as I would be my own two human children.  It filled me with fear to understand this for I knew that it would only end in sorrow for me.  The norm is that our children tend to survive us.  These two children of mine weren't going to ever possibly do that.  I would outlive them both.  That, too, I accepted and we, three, survived the 5 weeks of every two hour feedings.  Living out on the rez where the closest veterinarian was a horse doctor, I also took on the role of veterinarian, too.  Gin had a concave chest that needed special care.  Both struggled with bouts of constipation and bloating from the kitten formula.  We got through it all though and I was rewarded with two beautiful little children with furry faces. 

I washed them clean a few times a day with a warm, damp washcloth wrapped around the tip of my forefinger to emulate a mother cat's tongue.  As they grew older, I taught them to pounce and drag away tiny stuffed animal kills for these were survival skills that I knew that they may possibly need.  I taught them to touch noses as a way of saying hello. In the end, they became two very unique cats--a mixture of both human and cat qualities.  My son helped me during the day with Gin and she bonded most with him.  Lucky was my son, through and through, loving to be held like a baby and reaching his paw up to gently touch my hair and face with a look of complete adoration on his face--just like my own human children did when they were infants.  None of us ever considered either of them to be as simple as pets.  They were our family, through and through. They were more than just survivors of what should have been a fatal birthing, they were survivors of the Navajo rez.  Some of the Navajo came to see them once they had survived and were taken aback at how amazing the two kittens were. 

Little People were way cooler to Lucky than a lousy ball.

When it came time for Lucky to be neutered, there was little choice but to go to the horse doctor.  Yet, he had experience in the neutering and spaying of smaller animals for he, out of grief for what he saw happening to the feral cats and dogs on the rez, would capture them and fix them for free before setting them loose again once their wounds were healed.  He was in absolute awe over Lucky and I think he didn't want to part with him at all when I went to pick him up.  I knew my Lucky bear was special.  I always did.  I was so happy when we returned to Oregon because the neighborhood we were in was sheltered and safe.  Lucky liked nothing better to play in the backyard and would only leave the yard to occasionally walk with my daughter and I to the school bus stop around the corner.  Life was great for Lucky until 6 months ago, a feral cat wandered into the neighborhood.  Perhaps turned out by a desperate homeowner in the midst of this recession, it began to terrorize all the cats living in the block.  Lucky became injured and formed an abscess over one eye, which my son and I promptly treated that night.  I took Lucky in to the vet the next day to make sure that he would survive and updated his shots.

Touching noses

 Lucky's abscess quickly healed and he became himself again.  Doting, adorable Lucky who was an example of perfect health with his shiny, thick fur, good build, and clear eyes although he had taken up the most heinous cat activity of urinating outside of the litter box. I presumed it was spraying to ward off the feral cat, who did eventually disappear.  He also took to drinking from the faucet and rarely left my side.  Beyond these new affectations, however, he was such a picture of health that it deeply confused me when I started to feel like he was going to be leaving me soon two months ago.   There wasn't a single thing about him that had changed but yet, something had imperceptibly and irrevocably changed, which terrified me.  Yet, there was Lucky, seemingly the picture of health, to grab my hand from his perch on my bed to tell me that it was time to sleep only to sit upright on my chest with his own chest puffed and a cat smile on his face, purring wildly at his conquered victim.  In fact, he exuded so much good health that, when an accident occurred one night and his tail became injured, the vet gave him his checkup and found that Lucky was extremely anemic.  More testing came and feline leukemia was found.  A fatal flaw had been made when Lucky had been treated for his abscess--he was not given the vaccine.  My Lucky bear was dying yet, even the vet was convinced that he had much more time, despite the dangerous anemia.  His fur was so shiny, his weight so good.  Such a happy cat despite the pain of his tail injury.  She sent him home with me for which I'm glad.  Lucky passed away in my arms that night when he no longer had enough red blood cells to keep his body alive.  A mother always knows when her beloved child is dying, even when everything seems right.  We still know. These past two months, both Lucky and I savored each others' company, seemingly with the poignant awareness that we would soon be parted.

The next day, Gin was taken in to be tested for feline leukemia.  Delicate, beautiful, tiny little Gin immediately charmed the entire staff as much, if not more, than Lucky did.  We all cried for joy when she came up negative for the disease that had killed her brother just the night before. Lucky's poor veterinarian was devastated that he had died.  I told the staff to remind her what she had said herself about Lucky--he tried so hard to keep everyone from worrying about him.  Lucky duped us all but, because of her, Gin had a chance.  Lucky, himself, had given her a chance by all his little weird behaviors from stopping using the litter box to no longer sharing a water bowl with her.  Gin, in return, is taking care of me for Lucky in picking up all of Lucky's routines with me that he can no longer do. Lucky may have been born a rez cat but he was a rez cat extraordinaire and so, too, his sister.
 

Reaching for my hand, saying "love me!"

I know it's hard in these uncertain times to remember or rationalize the cost of a vaccination for a beloved family member but I urge you to take the time to do so.  Most cities in the US have mobile pet clinics that are also low cost.  Many also run vaccination specials that can further bring down the cost.  It is far better than tears, grief and loss for your family or for your neighbors. 

Good Neighbor Mobile Vet Clinic