Elrond, My Miracle

This is Elrond and Does He Have a Story to Tell

A man’s treatment of a dog is no indication of the man’s nature, but his treatment of a cat is. It is a crucial test. None but the humane treat a cat well.

- Mark Twain:? "Winter-end Excursion to the Sutherd" (1902)*

Well, I guess the only place to begin is to tell you a little about my love of animals.? It goes back to my childhood when I used to be the kid who tried to save insects from mortal harm by my classmates.? It didn’t bode well for the insects.? I wasn’t a popular kid.

We got a dog when I was just eight.? He was a mix of Irish Setter and Poodle (the big kind) and took to my older sister but not much to me.? Still, I loved that dog, he was family after all.? And there’s no accounting for taste.

But my first pet - other than a few fish and some hermit crabs, was a sweet whippet mix who had been abused.? We, my wife, and I rescued her when she was six and had her until she was almost thirteen when a fast-growing spinal tumor took her from us..?

But three years before we lost Shekel, we were walking her in the cemetery up the road when we heard an odd noise in the trees.? I wanted to go home.? It was February.? Cold.? Snow.? I wanted to go home, but my wife’s curiosity wouldn’t be sated.

Turns out, it was a six-month-old grey kitten about twenty feet up a tree and crying for help.? Well, it took some doing and some praying, but he made it down out of that tree before I got back with a ladder after taking our freezing dog home.

Once at the house, the kitten settled in, hissed, and swiped at Shekel the moment they met, and then let our sweet-spirited dog raise him like her own.

He was our first cat - Gandalf we named him.? Gandalf and Shekel were inseparable until her end.

But the years moved by, and as is often the case, one cat leads to another and another and another, ad infinitum.

On top of that, we help neighborhood strays with good food, warming houses, and even toys.

And this leads me to the story of Elrond.

February 2017:? Cold.? Snow.? Hey, it’s NE Ohio!?

Our warming houses were in full operation, but there are only so many and they max at about 40 degrees inside.? Still, it’s better than zero or subzero.? Why do I live here??

Anyway, we noticed that new visitors had started to come and eat our food and enjoy our hospitality.? But he had some obvious issues:? he limped due to probable arthritis in his hips; he seemed to shiver more than the other strays, and my heart just melted for his sad eyes.? I felt so bad for him.

Yet…

I have to defer to my wife at this point or I would have about thirty cats in the house.? Still, something about this poor grey and white cat grabbed me and wouldn’t let go.? And then came Saturday, the 25th.

I was walking onto the porch and so was he but limping as usual.? Then I noticed his front paws had NO CLAWS.? Eureka!? I couldn’t leave him outside that way, he’d be defenseless.? So, my reasoning sound, like he joined the family.? Well, almost.

You see, when you introduce a new cat - and in our case, he was number SEVEN - you have to sequester them for a couple of weeks to get blood work and vaccinations done.? It also helps give the other cats the chance to smell him and interact under a door frame so little harm can be done.

So, vet trip on Monday, the 27th.? Terror would strike my heart.

I knew it was taking a long time for the tech to come back into the room where Elrond and I waited, and the fear was beginning to mount.? Up to this point, I had learned that he was about six years old, had arthritis, and someone had done terrible declawing.? I don’t declaw our cats because it is more akin to cutting off your fingers to about the knuckle than it is clipping your fingernails.

Then Elizabeth, our favorite tech, came into the room to give me the blood work results: FeLV…Feline Leukemia.? I think I stopped breathing for a few seconds, and then I asked what we could do because I was NOT giving up on him!

She told me that he would need to be kept from our other cats under minimal stress - hey stress-free isn’t happening in our house - room and fed the best food we could afford.? Elizabeth told me that it isn’t as easy to spread the disease as most think.? It takes a couple of weeks' worth of exposure and sharing eating or drinking bowls.? They would send another untested sample of his blood to a lab for verification in the meantime.

So, we went home.? I cried a good portion of that morning and repeatedly beat myself up for not getting him inside earlier.? Maybe he wouldn’t have contracted it.? The one thing I promised him as I sat petting him in his room at home was that he would have a name and not be another statistic.? I did a lot of praying, let me tell you.

Well, I wasn’t expecting an answer on Tuesday, but the first good news came in.? The lab had gotten a negative result.? So our vet said that an animal can contract the virus but beat it before it has a chance to do its work on the animal’s system.? She said to keep up the high-end food and room to himself and they would retest in a month.? If it was negative after a month, then he beat it and was in the clear.

So we did as instructed.? My wife and I would take turns spending the evenings in his room with him.? It was a long month.

Blood was taken on the 31st.

Sent to the lab.

The call from our vet came in when I was at work on April, 6th.? NEGATIVE!!!? The virus lost, we won!

He was allowed to be with the other cats at last, and if you have ever tried to introduce a new cat to a multi-cat household, you know how hard it can be.? But Elrond just walked - painfully, remember he has arthritis and bad declawing - right into the living room and laid down right in their midst like he owned the place.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there have been struggles along the way for this little fighter:? seizures when taken to the vet, possibly P.T.S.D.; a faulty thyroid needing medicine; and a loss of some of his hearing.? But he won my heart forever.

And he has a name.? It’s Elrond.

In the intervening years, we were able to piece together what had happened to our newest (at that time) family member:? The people who owned him, had him declawed at a poor excuse for a veterinarian.? Then, after a later vet visit, were told he had contracted FeLV.? For whatever reason, they didn’t have him put down but decided to dump him off in the dead of winter at a house they knew cats were fed.? Maybe they had other cats they were afraid would get the deadly disease. Who knows for certain.? The point is:? They Abandoned Him!

Once at our house, the freezing cold gave his poorly declawed front paws frostbite, causing him even more pain.? Not being an exclusively outside cat, his fur was not as thick as a feral's. He found himself fighting with other cats for space on our porch and in one of our warming houses until that fateful Saturday when I noticed he had no front claws and brought him inside.

Safe and sound and warm.

Why include a story like this on my professional page?? Why not worry about SEO or Keyword Analytics here?? Because this is just for you and me if you’ve read all of this.? Because we’re different.? Because we believe you can’t buy love, but you can rescue it.? We believe in the power of never giving up, never letting go, and praying your guts out for a miracle…because they don’t happen all too often.? And I want you to know what motivates me to get up each morning ready to fight.? If you’ve read this far, then you’re a fighter, too.? And together, we CAN make a difference!

Rest in peace, my sweetest friend.