In October of 2019, I found a bedraggled kitten covered in mud and hiding under a large piece of machinery next to the train tracks across the street from my house. It had stormed the night before — lashing rain, booming thunder, and a tornado touched down in Parkway Village — and the kitten had been lost in the tempest.
I waited a little while to see if the kitten’s piteous cries would lead his mother to him, but no go. So I stole a can of tuna from my housemate and coaxed the mud-covered feline into a towel-lined cardboard box. I called Memphis Animal Services, but it was after hours, so I left a message and took the sad little stray to my girlfriend’s apartment. Though I told Syd, “Don’t get attached. We’re not keeping him,” by the time I got a call back from MAS, I had taken the cat to the vet for a checkup, vaccinations, and to find out if I needed to bottle-feed him. Before long, the little kitten known on his vet intake papers as “stray domestic shorthair” was called Ampersand, and he was here to stay.
Yeah, they know exactly what they’re doing at MAS. They played me like a fiddle, and to be honest, I’m glad they did.
That was two and a half years ago. These days my girlfriend is my fiancée, we live in a different house farther away from train tracks, and Ampersand is definitely eating solid food. As I write these words, the gray gremlin is recovering from a rough couple of weeks.
Not long ago, Amp came down with what’s called feline idiopathic cystitis. The “idiopathic” is there because, as I understand it, the condition is more or less “an inflamed bladder, and we don’t know why.” It’s the diagnosis the vets give after they rule out stones or an infection or any of the other usual suspects for, uh, let’s say, “litter box difficulties.”
Though he had been improving since he was first diagnosed, about a week before then, last Friday, Ampersand was not acting like himself. He growled at me. He was wobbly on his feet. After a brief visit to his usual vet, where Amp was referred to the local emergency clinic for animals, I found myself standing at the counter of said clinic and signing a consent form so they could rush him back to be seen by a doctor. I transferred an exorbitant sum of money to the vet, and they told me Amp had developed a urinary blockage. Well, I would growl at people too if my bladder was swelling without any hope of relief.
So Amp spent the weekend at the emergency clinic. They removed the blockage and hooked him up to a catheter to drain his bladder and IVs to feed him fluids. It seemed to do the trick. Since he’s been back home, my feline shadow has been acting much more like himself, but it’s clear he’s still got some healing to do.
This might seem like an awful lot of trouble to go to for a creature I found in the mud under some construction equipment, and honestly, I can’t disagree. But after three trips to the vet, a weekend stay at the animal ER, the medication I have to give him every six hours, the different medication I have to give him every 12 hours, and that time he peed on me, I can say one thing with certainty: It’s worth it, and in the end it’s a bargain.
Over the course of the past week and a half, I’ve spent hours at various veterinary offices, and I saw absolutely irrational kindness on display. You want to see unconditional love? Go spend an hour in the lobby of the emergency animal clinic on a Sunday night. That’s not how any sane person would want to spend an evening, but I didn’t see a soul who wasn’t ready to do whatever they had to to help the creatures in their care. These days, the world is often confusing and frightening, and the love on display was a comfort.
Maybe it seems silly beyond belief, infantile even, to write about my darn cat. I should be writing about Ukraine or any number of other, more serious topics. But I suspect I’ll get the chance in weeks to come. Today I’m thankful for the things that force us to show compassion, even when — especially when — it doesn’t make much sense.
The best pets are brought into our lives when we need them, which is, in my experience, exactly when another responsibility is the last thing we would choose for ourselves. Sometimes we need a shove in the right direction, and, even after a hectic (and, frankly, gross) week, I’m glad that an autumn storm brought Amp to my doorstep.
