sad animal stories

misfit

Misfit - One kitten's story of survival
Pet Rescue Stories


Janet Dubois

My story began in late September. I was born outside. My mother fed me and cleaned me and everything was fine for a while. Then one day I woke up and my mother was gone.

I did pretty well on my own. There were a few other cats to hang around with, and we found things to eat. I had a little trouble keeping up with them, because they had four legs and I was born with three. But I was doing okay. I was two months old.

One really cold day I started sneezing and my eyes were watery. I didn't feel well enough to look for food. Soon my eyes got worse. They stuck shut when I was asleep, and it was hard to get them open again. One day I couldn't open them at all. Then they began to hurt.

I'm not sure why, but I started to crawl off. I heard loud noises that scared me, but I kept going. I didn't know the noises were cars. My eyes hurt so much. Then all of a sudden, whoosh, I was up in the air. A human had picked me up. I was shaking all over, and I could hear a kitten crying and crying.

The man held me tight. He wrapped a towel around me, and I started to warm up. I listened as the man called animal control and said he'd found a kitten whose eyeball was popping out.

Soon an animal control officer named Janet came, and the man told her that he found me on Main Street. The animal control officer took me from him and gave me a kiss on top of my head. She said not to worry, they'd get me some help.

The officer rushed me to a hospital. She told the doctor that I was in pretty bad shape. Things started to happen fast. They put me on a table, and the doctor touched my eye. The pain was so bad that I bit his hand. He told the animal control officer that my eye needed to be removed. When he unwrapped me from my towel he noticed I had one back leg missing and no foot on the other one. He said I sure was a little misfit.

They talked about putting me to sleep. But the animal control officer wanted to save me, and the doctor said that I must have a strong will to live to have survived for this long.

They decided to remove my bad eye the next day. I spent a pretty good night in the hospital. It was warm, and I think I even went to sleep. When I woke up my eye was gone. They'd put medicine in my good eye, and I'd started to see again.

After five days in the hospital I was released to the animal control officer. She took me to work, where I met so many nice people. They all took turns holding me. Everyone kept saying how cute I was. I never thought I'd like humans, but every time someone picked me up, I started to purr. Purring sure beats shaking.

I spent the rest of my recovery time at a place called the kennel. I got great care there. They gave me my medicine, held me a lot, and made me fat. The animal control officer visited me often. She kept promising that she'd find me a special home. Well, on December 24, just like on the Island of Misfit Toys in the Christmas story, I got a family. Now I have other cats to play with, and I'm the happiest kitten in the world. I wish I could thank the nice man who found me and called animal control.

Janet Dubois is the animal conrol officer in the Town of Blackstone, Massachusetts.