The prodigal cat

Friday Oct 12/07
Morty had been missing about 4 weeks when he simply showed up on our front doorstep again this evening. He just didn't come home one night early in September. (He'd been out overnight on a few rare occasions before, and gone a couple days maybe twice when he was younger and we'd tried to keep him inside: when he finally got out again it would be awhile for him to return. That was when we decided we had to let him go outside regularly.) When he hadn't returned in a couple days this time I knew something had happened, and as the days turned into weeks my hope turned more and more to mourning.

He wasn't fat before but neither was he underweight. Now I am almost horrified to find he is just skin and bones. His ribs stick out and I can easily put my fingers under his ribs where his sunken gut is.

 He's lost muscle mass as well, and hasn't the strength to jump up to the cat food: I've put it  down on the floor for now. He hasn't much strength for anything it seems. He was very excited to be home, talking up a storm but kept falling asleep. Each time when he closed his eyes for another nap he would be twitching in dreams in only seconds. What a lot of twitching it is too! What an ordeal he must have gone through! He only sleeps a minute or at most five then wakes up again. I'm hoping that's more a sign of his excitement than of his health.

We will probably never know what happened and where he's been but since he's clean it's most likely he's been trapped inside something somewhere in the neighborhood. He has a patch of fur missing on the back of his neck that could be a sign of his repeated attempts to get out a hole that he could only get his head through. There is some scabbing along the back edge where his shoulder blades now jut up under the skin. Can a cat survive a month or more without food, trapped perhaps in some neighbor's shed or something? Not likely without water, but would there be water in a shed? What else would be clean inside yet keep him trapped for weeks?

It is a relief to see him eating, but he is eating just a few pieces at a time and not very enthusiastically. That's for the best for now as his stomach likely has shrunk significantly and he probably couldn't keep it down if he tried to eat too much at once anyway. Still, I am concerned because I know if starvation is too far advanced the victim simply won't be able to eat enough to recover when food is reintroduced. If Morty survives the night the likelihood of his recovering increases dramatically. If he's able to eat more each time tomorrow he will probably live. I wonder how many days it will be before his digestive system wakes up and he uses the litterbox? The longer that takes the greater danger there is of his not recovering.

I thought I cried a lot in the weeks that he was missing but I've already cried more than all of that tonight. If these are tears of joy, why does it hurt so much still? Some I guess is sorrow over what he must have gone through the last few weeks and some because I know he's still at risk. I missed you so much, Morty! My concern for him is renewed each time I pet him and feel his painfully prominent backbone. The analytical part of me says I'm being way too emotional over just a cat but then I cry some more.

God, thank you for bringing Morty back. Please keep him alive and strengthen him quickly!

I'm having a hard time settling down to sleep. I keep thinking this might be my last chance to pet him in this life and then I cry some more and pet him some more. I'm writing this out as a way to pass the time each time Morty naps. It's now nearly 3:30 am.

Saturday Oct 13/07
Morty is still alive, thank you, Lord. I carried him upstairs to the food dish when I awoke and he ate another few pieces. Barb says she saw him eating earlier this morning while I slept. He didn't stay long with her before coming back to the bedroom. He talks almost constantly while he's awake and not being petted.

As I pet him, I feel how every bone stands out in stark relief under the skin. There's certainly no fat there and I can find only an amazingly small amount of muscle anywhere.

He's following Barb around right now, a healthy sign as he seemed pretty fixated on me before that. It's clear he's happy to be home. He was only with Barb for about five minutes before coming back to me, telling me all about it as he walked. That was enough activity for him, now it's nap time again.

I hand-fed him when he didn't seem interested in the food in the dish. He ate five or six pieces before walking away.

He's used the litterbox! Cat feces are pretty stinky at the best of times, but this is in a league of it's own!

It's evening now, and there's noticeable filling in his gut already. I can no longer put my fingers under his ribs! Barb has been soaking a few pieces of cat food at a time and he's liking that much more than dry. I bought three little tins of kitten food and although he's not eating much at a time he's liking that too.

His naps are now seeming more normal, still just minutes at a time but now it seems like it's activity nearby or a sound he hears that wakes him. He does seem to be on edge yet, a side effect likely of wherever he was.

Unless some other issue crops up it sure looks like he's out of danger!

He seems to be trying to get me to go to bed so he can sleep on top of me, even though it's only early evening.

Night time now, everybody is in bed and Morty is asleep on my tummy. His sleep seems much more normal now, not waking every few minutes like before and dreaming takes awhile to start. He does appear to be coming back from the edge of exhaustion.

Sunday Oct 14/07
Morty's health is steadily improving. His nose is wet again right now, I'll be watching to see if he still gets fatigued enough at times in the day that it dries again. He's still very much wanting to be around people, especially me if possible.

It's afteroon now and Morty is asleep on the couch, breathing deeply but not twitching in dream: a good, healing, normal sleep.

Morty has spent  most of the day sleeping, as he is right now. When he has been awake today he's not been nearly so desperate to be petted or otherwise interact, although he's still appreciative of any attention. Mostly he's just happy to see us nearby and to chat us up a bit before he slips back asleep again. Besides the food and water we're mostly hand-feeding him, sleep is just what his body needs.

Monday Oct 15/07
He is still painfully thin today of course, but he is otherwise seeming quite normal. He still sleeps a lot and that will likely continue for the next couple weeks as he recovers. He is so light and thin, when I pick him up it's like I'm picking up a paper cutout of him. He still can't jump up to where the food used to be, but he remembers being able to do this so he keeps trying.

He's even more calm today. If he sees me nearby when he wakes, often he won't even strike up a conversation.

One complication in his recovery was his neck got very itchy when the hair started to grow back. He scratched his neck so much that it was bloody.

We tried bandaging his hind feet when clipping his claws very short didn't seem to help much, but it was obviously uncomfortable for him and it was tricky getting them on tight enough to stay on without cutting off circulation.

Eventually we found it took a half roll of gauze bandage wound around his neck and under his front legs (to keep him from sliding it off) was required to allow it to heal and the hair grow back. He had a bandage on until about March. It's a good thing they're cheap because they would only last a few days before it would be too tattered to cover his neck properly. Once the hair was back he left his neck alone, but there does appear to be a lot of scar tissue there as he is especially appreciative of getting his neck scratched.

Afterword, June 7, 2010

Morty did fully recover, with only an even stronger fixation on me and a greater appreciation of food as evidence of his ordeal.