Washington Cross

This morning, I found this little guy on the freeway offramp where I exit every day for work.  He was sitting there in the middle of the road.  I stopped the car, put on the hazards, and approached him.  He crossed the road into some pretty thorny bushes between the ramp and the actual freeway, and I knew I had to extricate him, because he had little chance of surviving the day if I didn't.  I came out of the fray covered in scratches, stuck all over with little thorns, and pretty dirty.  And then I had a cat in my car.  As you can see, he's quite safety conscious and elected to ride in the infant restraint.

Although I could complain for hours about my job, one huge advantage of it is that I can pretty much change my schedule at will, so I went in and did a switcheroo to work this evening.  Then I took the cat to the vet, got my car washed and vacuumed to get rid of any fleas, and went to Petco to pick up some necessary items.

I should mention that I named the cat Washington about a minute after I got him into my car.  I found him on the Washington exit off the 10 freeway.  So I guess I had it in mind to adopt him right away.  He's on a trial basis now.  We'll see how he does.  He's hiding under Jeff's desk, and I expect he'll be there for a few days.

Sadly, when I went into work later, I exited at the same place and I thought hey, I wonder if Washington has any brothers and sisters.  And right after I thought that, I did see a little kitten quite exploded in the road, very near where I had found Washington this morning.  It didn't even occur to me to look around for more kittens earlier today, and I was kind of devastated to find out I'd separated them, and then one hadn't made it.  So now I know that Washington is not only hiding under Jeff's desk and taking some time to adjust; he's mourning the loss of a family member.  Maybe several.  Could have been a heck of a lot worse for him, and I'm sure he'll recover, but he's had a tough day.

One kind of fun thing today for a geek like me was that for some reason my vet thought I would be interested in seeing Washington's infestation of ear mites under a microscope.  Man, that guy has me pegged.  I totally loved that.

Washington was filthy and the ear mite thing was out of control, but he cleaned up pretty well.  I don't think he's actually a biter or a scratcher.  He was just terrified out of his mind this morning.  The fight had gone out of him when I picked him up from the vet.  They wrapped him in a little blanket, just like a swaddle, and all he could muster was a weak hiss by that time.

Zack got to pet him a little and was very good with the "gentle touching," although he did grab an ear.  There was no payback from Washington, so that's a great sign.  I offered him some food and sat and petted him while he ate; he was clearly starving.   So we'll see.  Any more scratching and he's out on his recently cleaned and de-mited ears.  But I'm optimistic.