Neelix Update and New Wave of Cats

Neelix, July 2015

Neelix is still with us, and still about the same. Some days he doesn't eat, and we go into panic mode, thinking the end is near. Twice in the last 60 days or so, he had an issue with bleeding gums. Two vets looked, but not very closely. They are quick to dismiss it as the tumor coming through since it is on the same side.

Still, the gums stop bleeding within hours, and eventually Neelix resumes eating. His face always looks battle-scarred from either the stretching over the tumor or something coming out of his eyes. But still he maintains.

Jordy, not sure if the indoor life is for him

Meanwhile, after a car accident in May that wasn't my fault but totaled my car, and my gallbladder suddenly acting up and being removed, it has been a rough summer and I got out of the habit of trying to get to work on time. I drive to various places I can catch a local bus. One morning, I cut through a part of our neighborhood that I never cut through. There's really no reason to go that way. It just puts you on the same main road in a different place. But I did it.

And there were three cats of various sizes crossing a field. Of course, I stopped and jumped out, like I always do when I see cats along the road, and two ran off. The third, the middle-sized one, did not. In fact, it rolled over to greet me and let me scoop it up. I caught a cat! That almost never happens. I returned home, the cat sitting on the dashboard in confusion.

It has a weepy eye that had burned off all the hair around that eye, so he looked pretty bad. So he's been in the house three weeks now, gone to the vet twice. The hair around his eye is growing back. He has a notched ear, which means he was part of a feral cat catch and release operation, but they did a poor job. He still has one testicle, which is coming off this week. Whether or not Jordy -- named after Geordi La Forge, who also had eye problems -- stays with us is unknown. He cries to go out most of the time.

Jordy wondering why this big cat Sulu gets the best seat in the house

And now...a kitten showed up in our yard this week, and I swear it looks like the third cat -- the smallest one -- I spotted the day I scooped up Jordy. Did this kitten figure out where Jordy had gone and make the five block journey on his own? He or she comes out at dusk and hangs out in the backyard until it is very dark, but we can't get near him (or her). One evening I had Jordy out in a cage in the backyard and the kitten came and cuddled up with him through the netting.