Stumblina

Our most pitiful cat, she’s a manx that we found while out on a hike in a seabird sanctuary. When we found her, we thought she was a goner — her rear end was all bloody and she had no tail; we thought it had been ripped off by a car or something. She hopped around like a little rabbit, because one of her front legs was useless. Turns out that she’s naturally tailless (all manxes are), and she was just sick and dehydrated. The useless leg was a birth deformity. With a little TLC she recovered very nicely, and we had another slightly grumpy little cat. Her name is a play on both “Thumblina” for her small size, and “stumble” for her odd feline gait.

While we don’t know for sure what her history is, I’m afraid it was an example of the worst kind of uncaring stewardship. Most likely her deformity made her undesirable to the family that owned her — and to “solve” the problem, they took this poor little kitten out and dumped her on a sandbar jutting out into the salt water San Diego Bay. Where we found her, there was no food and no water — and she could never have hopped far enough to find either one. She’d have died shortly of dehydration, starvation, or both.

We never recorded the date that we found her, but it must have been in the range of 1987 to 1989. That makes her something like 16 to 18 years old. She’s been a well-loved member of our household for all those years, but only because we were lucky enough to find her…

The picture at right was taken in August 2004. At the moment, she’s in decline (though she rallied a bit in the past couple of days). So far as we know, there’s nothing really wrong with her other than old age, but she’s got the typical feline reaction to not feeling well: she stops eating. She’s the proverbial “bag of bones” now, and of course that hastens the decline. We hydrate her with subcutanaceous fluids when she needs it, and we try every trick we can think of to get her to eat — and the last couple of days, that seems to be working. She can’t make it to the litter box anymore, so we’ve got her in absorbent “diapers” — not particularly cute, but effective at keeping her from wallowing in wet bedding. We keep her warm and as comfortable as we can. But even with the recent rally, it’s clear that someday soon we’ll be mourning her, and remembering the best moments…

Click on the photo for a larger view of this cat who escaped an awful fate…