Category: Cats

Talking about cats

The start (or end) point of a walking park built along an old railway line is about ten minutes walk away from our house. This is one of our neighbours’ walking courses, and she said there were many stray cats there these days. The other day, for the first time in ages, we passed there on our way home, and indeed there are many cats!

At first, we met a dark brown one and a white one. They looked smallish still: both maybe less than one year old? The white one was maybe hungry, or it may be friendly, because it came close to us. It had what looked like pus in its eyes, so it couldn’t open them well. (Could it see us?) We worried about the yellow stains on her fur.

Next, we met a tortoiseshell cat. It also came close to us. And it also had weepy eye trouble. Too bad: it had a pretty face and shiny fur.

A bit further along, we met a big light brown and white striped female cat. She was hunched up, making her body round, so we called to her saying ‘Chilly today?’, and she also came close to us. It seemed like she had a big tummy. We were not sure but if she got pregnant, it’ll be a tragedy. All of those cats have dirty bottoms, because of loose poo caused by not getting enough nutrition.

Then, there is a narrow path beside the promenade. It’s surrounded by fences so it’s too narrow for a human, but not for cats. A smallish male cat noticed us, then his cute face became not pretty any more. And we saw an another big male cat that hadn’t had surgery. It could be the boss around there.

Past the promenade, we came to an apartment nearby, and we saw three kittens, three or four months old. Two of them had bright orange-ish fur with a brown stripe pattern; one had dark brown stripes. Both bright coloured ones’ eyes were sore, and the worst one came close to us. It was cute: that day’s number one cutest! Because of that cuteness, it increased the sadness. We can’t take you home!

I read an article in the newspaper recently, saying that a kitten or a puppy loses the immunity its gets from mother’s milk at a couple of months old, so vets suggest that they get a preventive injection before that time. I never mentioned it before on this site, but our Kyoku also missed that chance. He started to live with us when he was maybe around eight months old. If we had arranged for him to get the preventive injection at that time, we might have avoided our current situation. Some time later, when we started to notice his sneezing, we got some support money from the city for a castration operation and made him get the surgery. (Even with the support money, it was a painful expense for us. In the female case, it costs ten thousand yen more than we paid.) We asked the vet about his sneeze, and he said ‘He’ll never recover, and it’ll be worse in the wintertime. Even if he gets the injection now, his condition won’t change much.’ But now we regret we didn’t take him to the vet again.

He recently passed his second birthday, and we’ve decided our Kyoku is a very good cat, except for the sneeze, the runny nose, and the occasional weepy eye. It’s too little, too late, but we’re giving him a supplement once a day that contains immunity ingredients for animals, and we try to clean his nose with disinfectant water every day. Kyoku seems to like his supplement. However, he runs away under a chair if he hears the sound of us taking out the disinfectant spray. So we spray to a tissue paper and wipe his nose and eyes… We wonder how it’ll work out…

We often hear about people who feed their local stray cats and make them get a sterilization operation. For ourselves, to tell the truth, it’s very hard to feed any cats besides Kyoku (and maybe also Shiro) because of the expense. Even so, we understand their purpose. Not everyone can give to the local cats equally. Not everyone likes cats. At the least, we want people who have a mind to keep or feed cats to think about what happens to the local cats. Because it’s so painful to see sad cats.

-YS, March 2005

10 March 2005