The Small Things

Amidst The Big Things

I have been fostering two kittens, possibly to adopt, here in Granada. One of them, (the smallest) Rafa, slept all day yesterday and I took him to the hospital last night. He had a fever of 40.1 and they gave him fluids, and an antibiotic shot.

The good news is he made it through the night. But things have gotten worse today, and he needs a proper diagnosis.

I asked for an X-ray as he has trouble with his lower body, but they didn’t do one last night, they said his fever was his problem. He was tested for Parvo and was negative.

He is on a Pottenger diet and last night ate raw beef, raw liver and chicken, which gave me hope. But today he again has no energy, and struggles to walk. I am hoping they find a broken bone.

Next vet appointment is with a vet a good friend swears by—in 1 hour. The hospital didn’t want to do an x-ray last night, though I asked, as they believed his fever was his problem, and diagnosed “a virus.”

Vet culture here, overall, is vastly more sane and decent than in the US and this is something want to write about because it lights up other things. I have many stories I’ve been collecting.

Last night, for example, they didn’t charge me (late night after hours exam, test, antibiotic injection, fluids…) They just said come back tomorrow with him and you can pay then. It’s like another world. In the US I’d have been on the phone crying, in humiliation, trying to borrow $2,000 from my stepmother…I know, I need to obey Dave Ramsey. I know.

The discussion about human medicine and animal medicine and cost and “capitalism” and “socialized medicine,” needs to be discussed at root level. Vet culture in the US is ineffective, deadly, highway robbery, in my experience. (Unless it’s broken bones.)

Kittens are actually in a way very mercurial, one might even say frightening, for how delicate they are. Rafa always sleeps next to me like a little orange Buddha puffball, and every morning all he expresses is how happy he is, and he ambulates to the kitchen in the manner of a tiny galloping horse, (but a rocking horse, front to back with paws together.) But not today. He’s just in his tiny bed, resting awkwardly, refusing even a bottle with bone broth and egg. I’m counting the minutes till we see the new vet, highly recommended.

Rafa has a sort of angelic spirit, very benign. He’s an orphan—not sure his age but 2 months-ish. Maybe 3. He lost his mom in a road accident and all his siblings got adopted except him, because he had the most common coloring. (quoting what the rescue group told me.)

I took in a second kitten 2 weeks later, named Alexander, and he is a little older. He has diarrhea on and off and I’m avoiding the extremely toxic NexGard and hoping he will recover with the Pottenger diet. Toxic index for NexGard (which I was supposed to give him) is rather shocking. I will start with pumpkin seeds and shredded carrots. I would really like to know how exactly a kitten’s gut gets healed and I feel it is an unfinished field, since Pottenger, not much.

Root cause.

I’ve asked my son to wait till Rafa is out of the woods to tell me he told me so. He told me I needed to stabilize and be frugal. I just lose my rational mind when a creature has lost its mother and I want to be the creature’s mother. But now I’m failing to cover world events, like the DNC Convention in Chicago, where Hope is making a comeback. Let me address that, quickly:

We hope murdering Americans will once again become a criminal act—that’s all.

I know Rafa’s life is in God’s hands. I feel unsafe. From what?

From myself.

Dissolving boundaries, not being realistic and pragmatic, too many thoughts, like snowstorm, and not enough dismissing OR harnessing thoughts.

German New Medicine would look at the shock when Rafa’s mom got hit by a car.

But what can we do about that?

They would say “Make the unconscious conscious.”

Sometimes when I think about the moment of the catastrophe, when Rafa’s mom was killed, I feel like I can’t get enough oxygen. To be a good animal foster person, you need nerves of steel. But Rafa is not a foster he is family. I need to try to get Alexander to another place so Rafa can rest, as Alexander is trying to provoke him to wrestle.

I had one three hour GNM session and it was about many stations, many degrees, many ways, of losing my mother. Afterwards I cleaned my whole house without disassociating and I was certain I was cured.

What I’m trying to “cure” is mental splitting. Extreme focus on something “random” but vanishing from the here and now.

People mistake it for rudeness or aloofness but it’s not. I have told close friends to not think I have forgotten them when I seem to disappear. I’m just thinking/processing/splitting but I’m never not here.

My father had a phrase, just to lighten this up a bit:

”I feel more like I do now than I did when I got here.”

I have to accept God’s plan for Rafa.

When my son and I went to Saville and Cadiz one weekend, two weeks ago, the baby sitter for the cats, Sinem, she actually was so stricken by Rafa that she cried when she had to leave him. I even asked if she wanted to adopt him, for this reason, but her circumstances made it impossible. Sinem is coming with us to the vet.

She texted: “He will be good and we’ll play together as always.”

It’s our friend Öyku’s vet we’re seeing, and he is exceptional and very intuitive.

Here’s my theory: I sense Rafa may have a lower body injury. He and Alexander got into some fierce tumbling. Come to think if it, my theory is growing on me. I think he broke something, during tumbling.

Kittens are so “unpredictable,” and I’ve gotten in over my head.

Eventually I’ll tell my son he was right. But in a world where we can’t seem to affect/control/fix the big things, one can sometimes experience that loss turned into hope and life, when one is able to save a kitten, or two.

Please pray for Rafa and I’m sorry to now have dragged you all into this, but I’m so nervous, I needed to explain what’s going on. As ever, I promise to get back at the big wheel as soon as I can.

This is Rafa a couple of weeks ago, my favorite photo of him. You can see his personality.

I imagine him healed.

God willing, it’s a broken bone, as per my theory.