He was the terror of the neighborhood, the king of the strays. Male cats tried to avoid him, because he always tore them to pieces. Until one day he appeared with one half of his face missing - actually hanging down. I thought he would die. But after a week he appeared again with a part of his face still bleeding and protruding as a mask. The outer part was healing but the inside is still raw meat.
When he was healthy, I chased him away - now I am feeding him. He is too wild, he cannot be caught and taken to a vet. I still do not know if he will survive.
UPDATE
Today, April 21, I saw him again after 10 days. He is still alive but from the picture you can see his state. Different organs are hanging from the still open wound. He does not seem to notice. He is moving around and has a very healthy appetite!UPDATE II
After an absence of many weeks, he was seen again on May 19 - the scars are there, but almost healed. Verily, they have nine lives!
UPDATE III
July 20. He is still alive - but not kicking. He has become almost tame and gentle. At times his scar is still bleeding, but he seems OK.
23 comments:
may he use one of his 7 lives, by the way, why mean cats are always male fat and white-red? i have a similar just the same colour and style, honestly, i call him 'the one eyed' cause he recently appeared with one eye only
I think he will survive.If you can put an antibiotic pill in food.
He will survive...cats have definitely higher pain threshold than we think and amazing self-healing capacities.
@resident
I tried it - but it is difficult. He appears every now and then, and you cannot sustain a regular antibiotic therapy. He is also very suspicious - if the food has a strange smell or taste he leaves it.
Αt least he appears to be willing to survive. :)
Strange, first time you didn't call a cat by his name. Or he doesn't yet have one?
If this is the case, I suggest you should baptise him as soon as possible. So, if the battle he's now giving is the last one, he'll cross the line at least with the satisfaction he can introduce himself and live in peace with all those past cats we already know from your stories.
@antvol
he actually does not have a name. He looks exactly like my cat, Kalman, but as he is so fierce and aggressive as Kalman is peaceful and meek, he was up to now called Anti-Kalman. Just his opposite (e.g. anti-matter).
But I agree, this is not a serious name. Tf he survives maybe we should call him "Scarface".
Given the trauma sustained as shown in the photos, Scarface strikes me, amazingly enough, as an understatement. How about Scarhead? It gives a heavy metal twist to the story.
I would just baptize him Scare!
Neighborhood's big time gangster obviously lost face...
One of Don's hitmen perhaps?
I was again wandering in my saline graveyard. Noon it was and I could not bare neither the sunlight nor the white in memoriam marbles. Smell of death and decay. And suddenly on the verge of death, I found a little feline creature. She was standing on the edge of an empty grave, with her brains running down her face. Was she standing there waiting death? Maybe she was at the right place, I reckoned. Not to mention that no cat ever entered the graveyard. They are all strolling around the entrance door, but never entering. Apart from her… I left her… on the verge. A few hours later, she was in my home yard and people named her Eftehea… I opposed… But then again, she chose life…
“The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought,
of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.”
In my (first) comment, I wrote woods instead of wounds. Sorry, I meant wounds...
The cats, (big cats and small cats also), are fighters and their resistance to wounds and strength are almost unlimited.
I think that he will survive!
The cat was attacked to death, probably by dog. Remarkable is that he is wounded at the front (at the neck), not at the back. So we can conclude that he didn’t run… He stayed fighting…
I wonder whether this scar would affect his contact with the other cats (supposing he wasn’t aggressive and all that).This cat reminded me of a recent case with a french woman who was inflicted with a rare “facial” cancer (!) and she appealed in court for euthanasia but her request was rejected.I guess, this would be the most… humanistic approach from the part of the majority since majority defines ethics in practise.I don’t know if it can define consiousness as well,though…A little later the woman commited suicide.
(here’s the page I saw about her:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=540464&in_page_id=1811&ito=1490 )
But a cat can't think of comitting suicide.I hope that he wouldn’t prefer it if he was able to do it…Anyhow,I love ambiguous face espressions so I send my love to the cat(as his face expression is distorted thus …"ambiguous" :))
I Hope he makes it!
I have been thinking lately that there is nothing more wild and demanding than life. Even, I could say, nothing more ‘destructive’. It is so poetic when we see a plant in the middle of a cement square – but consider the absolute and blind force to survive, that causes such images. Life is voracious – each species is against the rest, each animal is against the rest of its own species.
And natural selection? That’s what our 21st century would not allow. That’s what we want to escape from, regarding the past. I understand we talk about nature – but sincerely have difficulties accepting and practicing the distinction between brutal nature and my personal beliefs. I really do. I feel so frightened by images like the ones portrayed, that I turn numb. If I’d draw some parallels with us, humans, they’d be with medieval ages: these images portray the ultimate degrading of life, the absolute rule of brutal force, the lack of any sort of justice. And the problem is that this is not the way I tend to understand life. As I said: I have difficulties accepting and practicing the distinction between brutal nature and my personal beliefs. Life is one – for humans and animals. (I understand this is utopic – but I don’t rationalise, I express my feelings.) I understand that in this manner I humanize nature. But I also think that the author of this blog, when chasing away the particular cat from his garden (since it was bullying the others), well, there was an element of ‘humanisation’ of nature in his action. Defending the weak is not part of nature. Anything but part of nature, actually.
Also: the particular cat was part of life while it was bullying the neighbourhood. Now it is part of life as well – just on the other side.
Loving the animals through human culture – I wonder if it makes sense.
Scattered thoughts…
Since I wrote the post, Scarface has not appeared again. In fact the last time I saw him was on the 11th of April. (I shot the photos on the ninth).
Ten days is a long time...
I don’t know why love has to make sense.Could it be that my intelect is not evolved enough?Truth is,whenever I try to rationalise love I only manage to lose it. When I was growing up I used to feel fear for the animals -more or less-.After all these years,I see now that before that , when I was even younger (the time I knew nothing about all these things you refer to -about the wild thing life is and how wild beings are- ) I was only amazed by the existence of others (humans and the rest of the animals).What I felt didn't have to make sense and I don’t think I was affected by culture so as to feel anything.The writter's intellect is quite inspiring but I don’t know whether this action was based in his cultural background or intellectual motivation.Does motivation count more than this specific action?
(not for the cat I guess,he can’t even count!)
*Glad to know that the cat's ok,he is amazing...
I 'm referring to the comment of yiannis h
Thank you so much for feeding the cat. This poor soul needs surgery. Please call an organization in your area that takes care of stray animals. They usually have animal traps, they take care of hurt or sick strays and once they are healthy they try to find homes for them or if they are too wild they release them again where they originally found them. That's if he comes back. Thank you for all you have done already.
Boy, those pics really tore my heart.
@myconos
sorry to say he has not been sighted since I shot the last photos.
Post a Comment