If you find a small animal almost dead, but not quite, by the side of the road… what do you do?
Publicado em , por Pedro Couto e Santos
It was a normal work day, meeting in the morning, meeting in the afternoon. They both went OK.
Later, Dee joined me at the art school where I teach part-time; since they need a new person for fourth year design class, Dee went to interview for the job.
Never mind how it went… we were coming back and we saw a small black cat lying by a tree, on the sidewalk. First I thought it was dead, but then it moved and I felt somewhat relieved it was alive. Well… we were just going to pass the cat and be on our way, only we looked back. It’d been hit by a car, no doubt. It’s eyes were half closed, the swollen tongue hanging from it’s mouth underlined the visible difficulty it had breathing. The left side of it’s head was bleeding.
The dilemma struck, obviously. What to do? Here we are, not exactly near home, we don’t have a car. A ferry trip, plus a bus trip await us. We have three cats already, and we have no idea if this one is even near making it.
Dee couldn’t take it, and while I fought my tumbling stomach she made up her mind. She picked the cat up and wrapped it in her coat… The little animal was clearly in bad shape, but there was no other choice for us, we had to take her.
As fast as we could, we took it to the vet “It” is now a “her”. The odds aren’t looking too good. She’s hurt bad, she can hardly breathe and she probably won’t make it through the night. The vet gave her a couple of shots: antibiotics and anti-inflammatory and instructed us to keep her warm. Her body temperature had dropped quite a bit. She wouldn’t have lasted a couple of hours more on the street.
It was a long, sleepless night. After a while she started panting for air, just like a dog, her tongue going a hundred miles an hour. The whole night she breathed like that and I thought her heart wouldn’t take it. But it did and she lived through the night.
