A Kitten's Thanksgiving

On Thanksgiving night when most people were sleeping off the effects of eating too much, our team was in the streets. Braving the harsh cold and a brisk wind that gave the air a predatory bite, many animals were out looking for something, any small scrap to feed themselves. As always, this was no holiday for homeless animals -- life offered them no bounty for which to be thankful.

But the night was not completely without hope. A scrawny; kitten was in one of the alleys; he moved with difficulty as if he hurt more with every step he took. This was a kitten we had seen weeks before but who had stopped coming to our call. On the occasions we saw him, he would not be enticed by food and he still had enough spunk to evade capture. He was so young and thin, the weather had gotten so cold, we thought surely he had succumbed to exposure. Yet, there he was, out on a Thanksgiving night cold enough to keep many animals from leaving whatever meager shelter they managed to find.

He couldn’t have been looking for nourishment because he never responded to the scent of even the most tempting morsels; perhaps the hand of Providence guided him back to the alley at just the right time for us to see him. By now he had no spunk, no fight left at all in that tiny spirit All it took this time was a firm hand on the scruff and his days of dying in the alley were over.

From the vet we found out the reason he didn’t want food. His little jaw was broken in several places and X-rays showed the breaks had started to mend on their own. This was not necessarily a good thing because the re-forming jaw bones would harden so far out of alignment that he could not open and shut his mouth. Further, the impact had not only broken his jaw but also sent his lower teeth through the roof of his mouth.

By the time of this newsletter’s printing, our Thanksgiving kitten will have had surgery to repair as much of the damage as possible. His jaw may never be exactly right, and he’l1 go through life from an early age missing a number of teeth, but he fought and won the battle of life and death - the rest will be easy.

Kindling is a gray tabby and will be up for adoption in January.