First, in an alarming way, then in a good way.

First, a photo of something pleasant.

When I finally got outside to do my evening stuff, I was able to pick a bunch of peas and raspberries.

It seems quite a lot of our peas have been “topped” by deer, but they seem to like the leaves, and not the pods.

I wanted to have that photo first, so no one squeamish sees the next photo in the post previews. You are warned!

The first time I started to go outside, I spotted the kitten with the messed up eye. After putting the food out, I was able to snag it and bring it inside for an eye washing.

That eye was looking worse than ever. The swelling was massive, and it looked like the eye was not going to make it.

We decided to call the vet. After talking to them for a bit, they had me come in as an emergency visit. This is how the kitten looked after we got it in the carrier.

That is not good. Not good at all. You can’t actually see in the photo, just how bad the swelling is. Just a great big ball over his cheek bone and partly towards his ear. While we washed the eye, I move the lids around and could see gunk was accumulating under the eyelids, too – not something we had any way to wash out.

By the time I got to the vet, it actually looked better, though all the pink tissue was blood red. The eyeball itself no longer looked cloudy, like in the photo.

I was taken to an examination room immediately. Just before leaving, I messaged the Cat Lady with the above photo, and we chatted for a bit while I waited for the vet. She has seen this before and told me about some medications that worked wonders for her, in just a couple of days. I was feeling better about that, by the time the doctor came in.

Not so much for the Cat Lady, though.

Her cat that is blocked is back in surgery, and he’s either going to make it, or be euthanized, depending on how things go. They’ve already spent thousands of dollars on this cat. I’m assuming they are doing the last ditch surgery of creating a “female” urethra. I honestly would never go that far. There can be so many problems after the surgery, and a severe reduction in quality of life. I don’t know for sure, though. Unfortunately, not only are they dealing with this, but family from out of country are in and they have to put a smile on their faces attend a family gathering. She’s a total mess – and yet she still was able to encourage me about the kitten!

When the vet came in, we talked for awhile and I explained the background on the kitten. This is only the second time I’ve been able to catch him (when I mentioned I hadn’t even had a chance to see if it was male or female, she did check and was mostly sure it’s male). She said the eye was likely related to herpes, and I told her how we’ve been giving the outside cats lysine to help with that. The adults are fine now, but once the kittens start getting weaned and eating solid food (including the mice and birds the mamas bring them), their eyes start getting gummy.

She used a light to look into his eye and confirmed that it’s gone. It’s full of blood and apparently starting to rot inside. All that swelling you can see in the photo? That’s all eyeball. *shudder* We’d be treating it for a while, and then having it removed later. So many of them have red, leaky and stuck eyes, but we can only catch a couple of them, once in a while.

The only way we could treat the kitten would be to bring it inside, of course, but that meant we would be able to control the lysine dose. They weighed him and worked out that he would be getting half a scoop – the scoop that comes with the lysine, not the size I’m using for the outside cats! – mixed into his food, twice a day. For an adult cat, it would have been 1 scoop twice a day. We would have gotten eye drops, too.

Note that I’m speaking in the past tense now.

The vet then took him out to wash his eye with saline solution, cover the eye with gel to keep it from drying out, and give him a slow release antibiotic injection.

Then she came back with him and a handful of medications to take home with him, started to talk to me about it, then asked, “unless you want to adopt him out…?”

???

I wasn’t quite sure if she was serious, but I said yes, of course. That would be a huge help. We already have too many cats in the house (the last I saw this vet, we had 16, but now Decimus and the 6 babies are inside, too).

Then she asked if I wanted to take him home first, or adopt him out now?

It seems one of the techs wanted to take him home. Now? Or Monday?

I was a bit confused, things were coming at me so jumbled. At first I was going to bring him home to treat him over the weekend, then bring him back on Monday, but then she told me to wait and went to talk to the tech again.

The tech was happy to bring him home with her right away.

So that was settled!

I was stunned, but happy.

Then I went to settle the bill. I figured it would be more than I got for the van, just this morning, and had already been checking my bank account to see what I could transfer over out of savings, if necessary. I’d mentioned to the vet that I’d been chatting with the Cat Lady, so when I was at the counter, she asked me if the rescue was covering the bill or was I? I told her the rescue was not involved with this kitten. Then I saw some semi-verbal communication between the vet and the tech that was out of view.

Suddenly I was being told it was okay. It was covered. The tech that adopted the kitten would take care of it, and I was basically – cheerfully! – kicked out. 😂😂

So… yeah.

By the time I left, I was in a bit of a daze. It all happened so quickly! I went in with a messed up kitty, worried about how we were going to pay for vet care and sure the baby was going to loose an eye. I left with the kitten in the best of hands. Who better than someone that works at a vet clinic to take care of it? The only way things could be better is if, by some miracle, the eye recovers. Unlikely, but possible.

It’s just so unbelievable.

The Re-Farmer