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[December 27, 1999]
I wish this were a joke, but it's not. One of the most surreal phone calls of my life came a week before Christmas. We were in Thiripur, visiting the family friends whose brother's house we've been at most of the time so far (in Coimbatore), and the phone was for me--most unlikely. It was our cousin-sister and housemate Theya in California, and she had come home from work that day to find blood on the floor, and a very scared (and yes, still alive) cat with an arrow through his neck and coming out his side.
The mind boggles at what was going on for whoever did this (assuming it wasn't accidental). That I haven't really delved into, as I just don't know. Theya had taken him to a vet -- where he was stable as possible, with an arrow through him -- and was calling from back home and needed to pack to get on a plane at 6am the next morning to come here!
Fortunately, we have good friends in the area who came through (thank you again, Monica & Miki!) and have been taking care of things with him. The arrow somehow missed his stomach, liver, and heart, mainly passing through part of one lung, so the chances for survival were actually pretty decent. The vet's removed the arrow, and last I heard Sluggo's recovering, slowly. For those who don't know, this cat was practically born in danger, picked up by an animal shelter after being injured in a car accident as a kitten. Normally with the injuries he had they would have let him meet his maker, but the staff there all fell in love with him and chipped in to pay for a veterinarian to fix him up. He's been through some scrapes since then (nothing like this though!) so I figure he's well through his nine lives.
The saddest part is that none of the people he's most familiar with are there, though Theya will be back the first week in January. Hang in there, Sluggo! (um, no, he doesn't have an e-mail address)
I've gone through some self-searching about paying the $$ for serious health care for a cat. In the moment, frankly, I didn't debate with myself very much about it. My cat, who's been a tremendous support to me at times, was hurt and dying, and I had the means to do something about it. It's less than I spend on my car, and I definitely value Sluggo more than a car. Pretty quickly though, the questions came--am I valuing a cat more than people? I talk about wanting people to make tough personal choices when they are aware of all the indirect ways in which those choices affect others. Is it just talk? Is my class showing through all my talk about wanting fairness?
I don't know. In some ways these questions are especially pointed here, where pets are not so highly valued, and where so many people's lives would be so completely changed by such amounts of money. There's issues of class between nations as well as individuals. Not to forget that there are plenty of people in the U.S. who are poor, or who for that or other reasons would judge me as crazy, hypocritical or immoral.
No grand resolutions, but I've wrestled around with it enough to feel somewhat settled -- I want to be accepted as an individual, in the context that I am in, as much as I want to accept others in the context they're in. There are plenty of other choices I make (driving a car, travelling on airplanes, investing in stocks) that I could wrestle about similarly, and sometimes do. As much as anything else, I can take this as a reminder to consider those items more fully.
Hope you and yours (and your pets, and your consciences :-) are in good health. All well wishes for Sluggo gratefully accepted.
Life,
John
[Thanks to everyone for your reponses re Sluggo. He's still alive, playful and happy as of June 2001]