Not the first time

Brief note - Sippi has been coughing the past few days and hacked up a nice lump of blood this morning. That has me worried but this evening she seems to be breathing better. So perhaps a worm died and it is working its way out of her system.

Now ... it is not the first time I've picked up a wayward animal. My last venture had me prying up cast iron storm drain lids to climb down inside after a kitten. My big dog Sandy and I heard it one night. We then spent the next four days tracking the little bugger. It was a tiny, fluffy, yellow tabby kitten. I was pretty outrageous - covered head to toe, gloves, hat, and a long straw I stuck into the cage. That kitten could be dangerous you know. With the straw I started to scratch the kitten's back and it purred ferociously. OC (orange cat) was a Santa surprise to three little girls.

My friend Marcy and I found three puppies at a boat ramp up the delta. One had a horrible wound on it's paw. It was severed all the way across save for a tendon holding it on. We spent a Saturday afternoon going from vet to vet until we found one that was available. The injured pup was put down right away. The other two got into a shelter and we worked to get them on TV. Before their big reveal we learned they had parvo. That was all she wrote.

But the one I keep thinking back to is Honeysuckle. She was half mean and half ugly, afraid of men except for my Dad, and barked incessantly at night at who knows what - shadows, bugs? My friend and I were on the way back from school and there she was on the side of the road. A bunch of trash was strewn along the woods and we found a package of balony that we used to coax her. I don't recall the conversation but somehow when we got to Susan's house, suddenly she couldn't take her. Honey was in really bad shape. She had two forms of mange, a malformed leg probably due to malnutrition, and we learned most of her internal organs were up in her thoracic cavity requiring surgery. She made it through all of it and including heartworms later in life.

So I kept thinking of Honeysuckle as I took Sippi to the vet. I thought that perhaps there would be something too bad to overcome that would be the definitive reason to let her go. But she wasn't aggressive with me and her food nor did she have any health problems that were insermountable.

The more I knew her the more she trusted me. She propped her head in my lap as I read a book. She looked up at me and I could see, "thanks."