The Loss of Lovely Sky

Alas, the story of Sky has a sad ending. Sky passed away yesterday in her sleep, in the loving care of the vet and staff of PAWS PARC, where she is now buried. She was doing well for a few days after I brought her back to Scout Bayoran Street, eagerly eating food that I brought, settling back into her life like nothing had happened. But on Saturday, her fifth day back on the street, I found her sitting disconsolately, walking stiffly and painfully, and unwilling to eat. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday morning I tried all sorts of food for her - fish and adobo from the calendaria, mashed-up kibble mixed with water, baked chicken breast minced up into tiny pieces - and while the other cats around eagerly attacked all of my offerings, Sky would eat nothing. She got weaker each day, still leaning her head into my chin scratches but by Monday morning when I stopped to see her and offer chicken before teaching the 8:30am yoga class, she couldn't even stand up, her legs splayed out from under her when she tried to get up to greet me and she just lay pitifully on her side, unable to even use both paws to cradle her head as cats usually do.

I was convinced that she would be dead by the time I returned from teaching the 8:30am class, and it devastated me to think of her lying there dying on the ground. My students were very supportive and thank goodness for yoga, whether teaching or practicing, it brings wonderful peace of mind. When I returned after teaching she was lying there taking short little breaths, still alive but looking like she was suffering and in pain. I don't know if she would have preferred to die on the street or in the hands of humans, I just knew that I did not want to see her die on the sidewalk there and find her on the trash heap when I returned later, nor did I want her to have to suffer any longer than necessary. So, having a few hours to work with before an appointment in the early afternoon, I took her to PAWS to be euthanized. When I got there the first thing we did was give her rehydration fluids. She had a notch on her ear from the spaying that looked as though it had healed, but when we rehydrated her a bit it started bleeding - she had been too dehydrated to bleed! Poor angel. Her breathing got deeper but more labored and she panted from time to time, like she was really hurting. The vet offered to put her on an IV to really rehydrate her and get some nutrition in her, but if she didn't respond and seem to improve by 4pm then we agreed it would be best to put her down. I said goodbye to her and reluctantly left for my appointment.

I called at 5pm to find out that Sky had passed away peacefully in her sleep at 3pm, an hour before the euthanize decision was to be made. I felt sad that she was gone, but relieved that her suffering was over. So many emotions. I do sometimes wonder, and others have wondered to me as well, why even allow myself to get emotionally attached in a situation like this? I mean, a sickly street cat, how could it possibly turn out well? But really there was no choice for me, in the first place I love cats - and dogs, though I am more attuned to cats - and my eyes and heart always leap when I see them, either in someone's home as a pet or living on the street. And Sky in particular was just a very special cat, perhaps she had been raised in a home and then become homeless, because she was so unusually social and affectionate. From the moment she caught my eyes in hers and rubbed up against my ankle I was smitten. She was a beautiful creature, she brought joy and light to my day whenever I saw her, and she got me not just thinking but also acting to help the lot of animals in Manila. As the adage goes, it is better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all.

I only wish I'd met Sky earlier and that I'd had the chance to have her spayed before she was on the brink of death. Cats are truly a part of the Manila ecosystem. (The same goes for dogs but I'll keep the focus on cats here for consistency and simplicity.) Think of it as though in every neighborhood, on every block, there is a fixed number of "cat slots," each slot simply demanding the presence of a cat like a vacuum attracts matter. Cats are adaptive, tenacious survivors. They may be graceful, beautiful, and fastidious - cats spend hours grooming themselves, licking each bit of fur into shiny smooth perfection, even if that means filtering and processing the smog and grime of Manila through their astoundingly resilient bodies - but they also patrol the streets controlling the populations of rats, cockroaches and other small undesirables. Cats are everywhere mostly because there are so many places for them, however due to the lack of spaying and neutering, there are often heartbreakingly too many, as they reproduce so often and there seem to be far more kittens being born than available cat slots, kittens (and cats) dying on the street wherever you turn. The isolated example of Sky's TNR, or trap-neuter-return, did not work out in the long term for Sky, but the strategy in general is a sensible and compassionate way of managing the cat population. Of course if all the cats were neutered and spayed there would be no kittens, however the reality of the situation is that we will never reach 100% of street cats spayed and neutered - far from it! But the more "cat slots" that are filled with healthy spayed, neutered cats, who are not run down from fighting over potential mates (males) or mothering (females) litter after litter of kittens who cannot be supported by the resources in their environment, the healthier and happier the general cat population will be, and the litters born to cats the TNR efforts don't reach will have better prospects in life as they fill slots that naturally open up over time.

The task of managing the cat or dog population in a city like Manila, like so many problems in the world, seems insurmountable. Just like I can see the train of thought that says trying to help Sky was an impossible task, a waste of emotional energy, time, and money. But if you're reading this, you are probably thinking about TNR as a way that we humans can compassionately coexist with our street cats and dogs. I hope you'll get involved, by donating to PAWS (http://www.paws.org.ph) (The Philippine Animal Welfare Society, which provides low-cost spay/neuter and works with passionate dedication to encourage the humane treatment of animals.) or an animal advocacy group near you, by leading or supporting TNR efforts in your neighborhood, and especially by always giving the street animals you meet a kind look. Any of these would be a beautiful memorial for Sky.

Kinky and Sky Get Spayed

Last Friday Kinky went through an important rite of passage of the domestic cat - she got spayed. I took her to PARC, the PAWS Animal Rehabilitation Center (PAWS stands for Philippine Animal Welfare Society), where I have been volunteering about once a week for the past couple of months, and where they have low-cost spay-neuter (P1000 for a female cat, P800 for a male).

I also brought a lovely little street cat I've been watching out for for several months now. There are always a few cats living next door to my building - right where I found Kinky last November. This little mostly-white girl with the vivid blue eyes stands out to me because she is so affectionate and friendly. She's quite emaciated and run-down-looking too, and I thought she was pregnant until a week ago when suddenly she had three six-to-eight-week-old kittens nursing on her, yet when I bring food she will get distracted from the food if I start petting her, she loves the attention so! If I am walking by and don't have any food, she and one or two other cats will coming running out to me because they recognize me as a frequent food-giver, but if I don't have any food the others will run away. Sky, as I've named her because of those amazing blue eyes, keeps after me to get her scritches behind the ears and backrubs. She even allowed me to pick her up a few times, very unusual and special for a street cat.

When I set Kinky's spay appointment I decided I would try to get Sky spayed also, about the time that it became clear that she was not pregnant, she was nursing - though coming to the end of nursing, her three kittens were eagerly chomping on the food I was bringing by. By Thursday when I brought Kinky in for a pre-spay checkup, it was down to two kittens, one disappeared in the typhoon on Tuesday night. (I came down Wednesday morning to teach 6:30am class and found Sky looking on over one soggy kitten curled up in the corner of each of two attached columns jutting out from the wall of the building where they hang out and I wondered, if there had been three columns, would have all the kittens have made it? Did the left-out kitten just get blown away?) I asked at PARC and they said bring Sky on in with the kittens, the kittens could stay at PARC with her for the three or four days while Sky recuperated from the surgery. And then when I went in to teach on Friday morning, leaving Kinky at home complaining bitterly about the total lack of available food and water in my apartment, it was one kitten - one of the two had been run over by a car in the night. And by the time I returned around noon with Kinky in her basket to put Sky and her remaining kitten in Kinky's airplane case, the third kitten had disappeared. I asked the building guard and he said the last kitten had disappeared that morning also. Life is not easy on the streets for kittens, so many die, so few make it to adulthood! So I lured Sky into the cat case with some fish from the sidewalk Calendaria on Tomas Morato next to Rustans and we headed off to PARC.

At PARC, Kinky was the first cat to be spayed since she'd not eaten since the night before and she was going home later. Sky was scheduled later because she'd eaten some fish when I lured her into the case she traveled in. I spent about 20 minutes hanging out with Sky in an enclosed room at PARC, let her out of the box and petted her a bit, but she was so tired and stressed I decided it would be best for her to just stay in her box - she sniffed around the room once, then found a corner under a chair to lie down in and, while she seemed happy to be petted, she just seemed to want to sleep. Who could blame her, having lost two kittens in the last 24 hours and then been tricked into a box by her trusted food-giver and brought to a strange place? So I hung out helping to clean cages and play with the newly-acquired cats in the cat quarantine area - before the cats are allowed into the general population they spend a few weeks to months in quarantine getting neutered/spayed, vaccinated, and dewormed, during which time they are pretty lonely so one of the things it's always helpful for volunteers to do is hang out with and socialize the quarantine cats and kittens.

Both cats made it through surgery with flying colors. Dr. Will, the vet at PARC, does hundreds if not thousands of spay operations a year and is a real pro, making a tiny incision, maybe 1cm - though he doesn't use a scope, the end result practically appears like he does the surgery arthroscopically! He did say that Kinky was a little challenging because "she's so fat" ... 3.5 kilograms (7.7 pounds) is a lot I guess for a 9.5-month-old cat. (I certainly don't want her to get bigger, she's going off her Royal Canin kitten food and onto "young adult spayed female food" now, that should help her stay stable.) Before leaving with Kinky I said goodbye to Sky who was still very groggy. Kinky woke up pretty thoroughly on the ride home and when we got back to my place she wanted to walk around but she couldn't really stand on her hind legs yet. She wobbled around like a drunken sailor making a beeline to her food bowl - LOVED the new food, she's always clamoring for more now that I know her weight and food allowance and am rationing her properly. Soon I heard a clattering sound, her failing to jump up on the counter and falling onto an empty water jug. So I started watching movies, she always sits with me when I watch movies. We had a little Johnny Depp double feature, watched Edward Scissorhands and Donnie Brasco before it was time for bed. The next day she was jumping up onto the counters and sink no problem and I decided there wasn't anything I could do to stop her. She's fine, and being pretty good about taking her Amoxicillin and getting swabbed with Betadine twice a day.

Today I returned to PARC to get Sky. She was in a cage in the quarantine area and looking pretty sad. She wasn't eating the kibble - she didn't understand it was food! I went to the calendaria and got her some adobo and bangus, which she devoured like she hadn't eaten for three days. I hope she'd eaten a few bites of kibble, I have no idea. She was so dirty too - I don't think she'd done anything but just lie there for three days, the poor little sweetheart. But she jumped right up for her pats and scratches when I arrived! I left her alone to digest and get ready for another meal while I went to help with some of the other cats and ended up giving a bath to Harley, a roughly six-week-old little calico orphan kitten who has long Persian-like fur and had lots of food and poop matted up in it - no mommy to groom her! She is used to being bathed and was pretty cooperative, and loved the hair dryer. This gave me idea - would Sky let me bathe her? She's let me hold her and seems pretty trusting, but who knew? I got clearance from the vet and gave it a shot. I was amazed at the level of trust the calm little creature had in me - she let me wet her down and shampoo her, at which time I discovered that she had lots of fleas! They were incapacitated and easy to take out, along with their nasty little black eggs. No wonder she'd liked me to scratch under her chin so much - there were lots of fleas camped out down there! Then came the blow drying, and I was amazed, there was a brief struggle after the first couple of minutes but she settled right down and let me dry her previously gray and oily fur into a fluffy soft whiteness, all the while scouring for and removing more fleas. After the initial resistance to the blow dryer she just totally surrendered. It was so sweet, she practically hugged my leg, purred, and let me groom her. Finally she was dry, I put her back in her cage with some more food, found the travel box, put her in, and took her home. In the cab ride home she cuddled in my arms the whole way. It was tough to put her back out on the street, if I could bring another cat into my no-cats-allowed apartment I would have but I will just have to trust that she will be much better off on the street spayed and rested than she was before. But please, if anyone wants to adopt a sweet, mellow little cuddlebun of a cat with eyes like the water at Boracay contact me ASAP!