The night we found a sick kitten

My girlfriend (Katy), who lives with me, was given a kitten to nurse back to health after being found alone in the middle of a car park in a bad way. This was mid-winter 2016 and on that night it was snowing on the Costa Blanca, Spain.

He was brought to our house and immediately Katy put him on the table and began inspecting him. Her friend (Inmaculada) who is neurotic and a bit sexy, was stood, stiff and quietly panicking in her head. They deduced from his mucus covered face that this kitten had the flu and immediately began force-feeding him semi-skimmed cow milk, 2.5%. He looked no more than 6 weeks old and barely weighted 2 lbs. Up until this point, I let the failed attempt at playing animal hospital carry on- but then the cat fainted.

If he had died that night, I would have had to walk to find a place with soil that could be dug through in a frozen ground (Spanish soil is made of 50% steel), and then carry him through blizzard conditions to bury him- that night I had ordered Dominos. I paused whatever I was watching, rammed the remaining half slice of pizza in my mouth until i was gagging on a cheese stuffed crust and got between these two hysterical women and the cat.

After a brief inspection I found that he had in fact lost an eye and had a shard of glass protruding out from his eye-socket to the opening of his lid. Katy wears contact lenses. I told her to bring her lens cleaning solution along with paper towels and her eyebrow plucker. I then washed my hands and got straight to business.

The cat was breathing faintly and laying on his side, still passed out. I used my hand to bring his head up closer to the light- no pun intended. Gently, I opened his eyelid and saw that the glass had punctured the corner of the socket near his nose. Using the pluckers I removed the glass from his socket in exchange for some cat blood. Katy brought a towel to place underneath the cat whilst Immaculada looked like she would pass-out next. I used the sterile water to the clean socket and then made a makeshift bandage out of duct-tape and toilet paper- clean toilet paper. The next day Katy took him to the vet.

I didn´t want the first cat and i definitely didn´t want this second cat but we named him Bones.

RIP Bones 27th of April 2017. He picked a fight with a car tire- the tire won.

If the life of a one-eyed cat interests you I can tell you guys stories about him such as, when he disappeared for two days and came back with a human-sized set of nads, how he protected his territory against two mature males, how he seduced the local redhead who has now adopted Bones´ old territory- our house-, how our first cat (Kiara- ones company, twos a crowd) hated Bones at the start but warmed up to him not long before he died, my theory as to what really caused his death and, many more.