Sick Kitty :(

Oreo is still with us, for now. He walks slow and stiff. His fur is messy and feels dirty. He still eats and drinks, but I know he can't last long this way. Right now he is curled up in his favorite spot behind my right shoulder on the back of the couch. I gave him an extra bit of snuggling this evening. He closed his eyes and soaked it up, and I remembered back to his kitten days...

Early one Sunday morning when we lived in town, a lady knocked on our door. She held a small kitten in her hands. "I found this kitten laying by the side of the road," she said, "Do you know who he belongs to?" The little boy with her suggested keeping him, but his mother said no. I told her that I didn't know who he belonged to, but I had a friend who might take him.

The little guy couldn't walk on his back legs and was scared to death. When we set him down, he leaned onto his two front feet and took off to hide under the furniture. We put him in a box and tried to coax him to eat and drink, but he would have nothing. He didn't even leave a mess in the box. He was in obvious distress. The friend I was so sure would take him in didn't have room for another kitty, so the next day I took him to the veterinarian to find out what was wrong with our new friend.

In the waiting room we ran into an elderly woman who I knew to be a "collector of cats". She looked directly at me and said, "You ARE going to keep him, aren't you?" The vet looked him over and decided he had a dislocated ankle and overnight we became the guardians of one small and very frightened kitten.

We were already the owners of a very large and fluffy, orange male cat named Peaches. Our new friend, eventually named Oreo, frightened of people, found great comfort in our other feline friend. Peach, a rough old tomcat, was initially a little taken aback by the attention lavished on him by the orphan kitten, but in an unusual turn of events they became great friends.