Dewey's Nine Lives

They wrapped a heating pad around the towel, set it on low, and put the kitten on the kitchen counter. As Sharon gently rubbed the top of the kitten’s head for comfort, Vicki carefully dried him with a blow-dryer. Halfway through, the kitten started convulsing. His mouth was hanging open; his eyelids were fluttering; he looked like he was having a seizure. He twitched, then started shivering and retching in violent dry heaves. It looked painful, as if his body was being pulled apart like Alaska’s pack ice in a spring thaw, but it was an involuntary reaction. The kitten, apart from his spasms, never stirred. More than an hour after his rescue, he still hadn’t opened his eyes.

Already late for dinner, Vicki called Michael. “I’m coming,” she said. “Tell my daughter I’m coming. I’m just going to be late. And, um . . . Merry Christmas.”

Then she called every veterinarian in the phone book. No one answered. Why would they? It was late in the afternoon, and it was Christmas Eve. She couldn’t leave the kitten at Sharon’s house because her oldest daughter was allergic to cats. Even if she hadn’t been, Vicki knew she couldn’t abandon the kitten now. Not after all they’d been through. After an hour, when his convulsing slowed, she put him in a shoe box, still wrapped in the towel and heating pad, and drove to Christmas Eve dinner.

“This is Sharon’s cat,” she told Sweetie when the little girl came to see what her mother had in the box. “He is really sick. But Sharon had to work, so I told her we would watch him through the night.” Sweetie was staring at the little black kitten, at his open mouth and his swollen eyes and his lifeless rag of a body, and Vicki could tell she was going to cry.

“He’s probably going to die, Sweetie,” she said, reaching out to hug her daughter. “I’m sorry. He is very, very sick, and we didn’t want him to be alone.”

“Okay,” Sweetie said, hugging her mother back.

They put his shoe box in the bathroom next to the heat register and sat down to dinner. It was a somber affair, nothing like a typical Christmas Eve filled to bursting with a young child’s noisy anticipation. They ate slowly, and their conversation seemed halfhearted. Every few minutes, Vicki and Sweetie tiptoed to the bathroom to check on the little black kitten. He had stopped convulsing and retching, but his panting was so shallow they could barely tell he was alive. He seemed to be struggling for every breath. And four hours after his rescue, he still hadn’t opened his eyes.

They left Michael’s house just after nine o’clock. Vicki had finally reached a twenty-four-hour emergency veterinary phone service, and they recommended buying some kind of protein, blending it down to liquid, and seeing if the kitten would eat a few drops. So on the way home, they stopped at a convenience store that was just shutting for Christmas. Sweetie, still wide awake, waited with the kitten in the car. “We can’t leave him alone, Mommy,” she said.

The store had one jar of meat-based baby food. Vicki bought it, along with an eyedropper. She tried to give the kitten a drop of the brown mush, but he gagged. She diluted the baby food again and again, until it was practically water, and finally, about 11:00 P.M., he kept down two drops. That was his limit: two drops of protein water.

“It’s time for bed, Sweetie,” Vicki said, once the kitten was tucked into his towel.

“But, Mommy . . .” the little girl started to protest, not wanting to leave the kitten, but she was so tired she couldn’t fight any longer. She was asleep by the time she reached the bed.

Vicki kissed her good night—Merry Christmas, she thought—and made herself a cup of tea. Every hour on the hour, all through the night, she fed the kitten a few drops of diluted baby food. Each time, when she saw him lying motionless on his side, her heart clenched and she feared he was dead. But as she approached, he started to shift his head. He let her push open his mouth (he still hadn’t opened his eyes) and squeeze two drops down his throat. Then she went back to the couch, turned on some Christmas music, and tried to stay awake for another hour.

She must have crashed after the 4:00 A.M. feeding, because the next thing she knew, it was Christmas morning. She leapt off the couch and rushed to the bathroom, where she had left the kitten in his blanket in front of the heat register. As soon as she saw him, she gasped. He was standing on four very shaky legs, trying to tip himself over the edge of the shoe box.

“What’s wrong, Mommy?” Her daughter trembled in the doorway.

“Oh, Sweetie, look! He’s alive. The kitten is alive.”

Vicki put her arm around her daughter, and together they watched as the kitten gathered himself on spindly legs and, with great effort, stepped one shaking paw out of the box. He pulled a second leg over, rested for a moment, looked at them with tired eyes. Then he turned back to his task and, with one final shaking lunge, pulled himself free.