Except for the longest white whiskers you ever saw, so long
that she looks as if she’s carrying a yard of fish bones in her mouth, Fleur is
quite an ordinary-looking little cat really – black, long-haired, silky on top,
fluffy underneath. She has a ring of
white on her chin, a white bib, white toe-tips on her forepaws, long white
stockings on the back.
But every
time I look at that kitten I think, “There goes a miracle.”
She was
brought in as a stray of about five weeks old and spent the first day huddled
away frightened, as was to be expected.
The next day I realised that much of this was due to shock, which now
started to wear off and pain set in.
Soon there was no part of her not in pain. She began to stiffen and in a few hours was
paralyzed from the shoulders down.
On close
examination it looked as if she’d been trodden on length-wise. Her young green bones had bent to the
pressure without snapping, but her hips and shoulders had dislocated. She had no external wounds but what internal
damage and displacement there was I couldn’t tell.
There were
already eleven orphan kittens, and a genet kitten, here at Wildwoods Sanctuary,
all on different formulae and schedules, but “Fleur” – as she came to be
called, I don’t know why – wanted no company.
She lay on her side moaning softly, the nictitating membranes half
covering her eyes.
It is difficult
to treat an animal in such pain. Where
do you even start without making matters worse?
She screamed at every touch and if the greatest care was not taken when
moving her, her shoulders dislocated.
For the first few days I could do little but dribble-feed her from a
spoon, keep her clean and sit with her, for she was just a feral kitten who had
never known a human friend and her natural instinctive fear of people also had
to be overcome.
The
programme of progressive massage I planned for her had to begin in a very token
way. I slipped my hand under her hind
paws without disturbing her and just let those silky little white socks lie on
my palm. Although this surely couldn’t
hurt, she cried and I could see in her eyes that all she wanted was to drag
herself away.
The next
step was to stroke her paws very softly, just over the tips of the hairs, hind
and fore paws, gradually a firmer stroking up to the hocks and elbows. I had hoped she would at least resign herself
to this soft, rhythmic action but days passed with no sign of her tolerating
even such sub-treatment, and her small muscles were wasting away and couldn’t
wait.
I stroked
her body from ears to tail, day by day becoming gradually firmer. Her cries were terrible although I was
scarcely touching her, but far harder to bear was the hatred of me in her
eyes. At least her screams were no worse
when finally my fingers worked on muscles, tendons and joints than they had
been when I merely stroked her fur. Not
only the major joints and muscles had to be stimulated and made to move, but
such tiny bones as those in her tail and the tendons of her toes and claws needed
to stretch and contract.
Those claws
needed occasional clipping, too, as did the seat of her pants for hygiene. This latter necessity she hated, swearing and
spitting as soon as she saw the scissors.
And one wonderful day she actually lashed her tail in fury. It was such a small flicker of movement I
could have missed it had she not repeated it, and my fading hopes of any
success swelled again.
Weeks went
by. She even grew a little. For quite a while I had felt that she was
screaming because she thought I was
going to hurt her, before I’d really done anything, and then there crept into
her voice another note, a flatness as of boredom. Perhaps she was getting fed up opposing the
unopposable. More noticeable was the
gradual change in her expression. She
could raise her head and glare at me and I saw the fires of fury slowly die
down to a warm and almost welcoming glow.
And one day when I was massaging her shoulders I felt the vibrations of
her growling become a purr.
To try to
induce her to move and play I sometimes put one or two other kittens in with
her for a while. One of these, a
newcomer, brought ringworm with him and almost all the kittens were infected,
including Fleur. This was a major
setback. The little bit of trust so
patiently built up was crushed for she loathed the rather drastic treatment, as
did the others. And fearful of carrying
the disease to the rest of the multi-species household I had now to handle
Fleur as little as possible, curtailing the time I had spent holding and
caressing her. By the grace of good
fortune and pretty powerful tablets Whipaway, the genet, whose progress to a
natural life in the forest was by that time well advanced, remained free of
infection.
 |
| Whipaway the genet |
When at
last the trouble had cleared up all the kittens were hostile, which a few days
of loving soon rectified. Not for Fleur,
however. In her efforts to avoid me she
began to flop about without direction; at least that was movement of a sort.
Now I was
able to return to, and intensify, the periods of long, firm massage, the
grooming and the loving. Added to the
ever-important time in the sun was time for her to be with the rest of us. The household cats who, over that summer,
tolerated no less than twenty-seven kittens, accepted Fleur without a murmur
and the dogs were marvellous with her.
They were so careful not to frighten her as they moved about, stepped
very cautiously round her, and even Bay, the Irish Wolfhound/Great Dane, took
extra care not to sit on her. (Bay sits
on everyone else, friend and stranger alike, with never a thought!)
It took
Fleur quite a while to regain the small measure of trust that she had had in me
before the ringworm trouble. Eventually
we got back to the point where her growl at the start of each massaging session
turned into purring. Then her frightened
cries at my approach ended in a note that was not of fear, almost of greeting.
One morning
when I went to her basket I found her curled comfortably against its curve
instead of flat on her side, but when I called her there was no response.
“Fleur!” I
gasped, my heart thumping into my throat. “Fleur, what’s wrong?”
I fell on
my knees beside her, my hands half expecting to find her stiff and dead. She must have been deeply asleep, for at my
trembling touch she jerked her head up and then, as if I hadn’t enough tears in
my eyes already, she gave me a sweet little “Prrrp!” of greeting.
After that
she cried only when I moved to pick her up.
I taught her how to lie against my shoulder so that her own shoulders
weren’t in danger of dislocating and she could feel quite secure. From there she visited the rest of the house
and the garden and the pens where the orphan fawns were kept. Like all the cats she adored the fawns, who
pranced and danced for her, nuzzled her face and practiced browsing on her fur. A large, flat bit of forest wood of an
interesting rottenness was brought in to encourage her to exercise her claws; a
small dog-basket was upturned for her hide under and eventually pull herself up
the side to a blanket nest on top.
Her first
efforts at walking looked as if she was coming round from an anaesthetic,
improving in time to the gait of a slightly tipsy sailor on a tilting deck.
I really
felt we were getting somewhere when we suffered another setback. Fleur developed a gum infection which failed
to respond to treatment, and I decided she must endure the rather long trip to
town, partly over a rough road, to visit the vet. I put her on a cushion and a blanket in the
travelling basket, and as an afterthought because it was cold, added an old
cardigan, fastened the lid firmly and put her in the Anglia van.
On our
steep, narrow driveway the brakes failed and the van rolled down the mountain.
As it tilted off the edge of the driveway I tried frantically to get the door
open while reaching back for the
basket. Almost too late, half leaping,
half flung, I hit the road and Fleur went over with the van, which rolled about
five times and stopped against a tree that smashed though the cab roof. Had either of us been in the seat we would
certainly have been killed.
I hurled
myself down the steep slope only feet behind the rolling van, Fleur the only
thought in my mind, wrenched open the buckled back doors and opened the basket
lid a crack to see if she was, pray God, at least still alive. In tumbling the cardigan had wrapped her
around and around and she suffered only a bruised forepaw – a lot better than I
could claim for myself! It took over two
weeks of the most careful handling to get her over her shock and terror.
Two months
later we tried another car journey, this time to get her spayed. Not knowing how displaced her internals might
be I couldn’t risk her having kittens.
Heavily tranquillized in advance, she took it all very well. Coming round from the anaesthetic, however,
she went into another blind and terrible panic.
She bit me hard time and again, bit her own paw until it bled, cried and
gasped and threw herself around in a totally uncontrollable way. Once the anaesthetic wore off she forgot all
about it and was my friend again.
 |
| The family: the Anglia van, Lea the duiker, Fleur (back) Jungle, and Drum (foreground) |
Today she
climbs trees, chases around with the buck, the leaves and the other cats, loves
and is loved by all the people and animals of our family. Her special friend is the beautifully marked
Jungle, another orphan kitten that somehow stayed and that makes six. Sometimes she catches small birds. This is something I hate, loving as I do both
cats and birds, but it is a relief to know that she could, if necessary, hunt
for herself.
The
complete and utter trust she places in me is almost frightening and though she
no longer needs massaging she comes to me, begging for it. She butts her little head into my hands,
pushes and rolls and poses between my palms.
If I pretend that I don’t know what she wants she thrusts one leg after
the other stiffly into my hand and grasps my fingers and pulls them in against
her.
I have had
several offers of good homes for her but it is unthinkable that she should
leave the Sanctuary where people and animals alike all protect and care for
her. Besides, her innocent delight in
living and moving is a contagious and addictive thing, and I, for one, am
hooked.
***
On the edge of the Sanctuary
driveway once stood a huge Cape fig. One
day it fell, more or less over the same spot where the Anglia van had
rolled. It left standing a tall and
straggly cabbage-tree, which Silvery-cheeked hornbills found a great perch. Nothing
signified Fleur’s remarkable recovery than, I remember, the sight of her
clinching her way up the trunk, yammering away and keen as mustard to catch one
of those birds, which must have been at least twice her size. Oddly, I can find
no good photographs of Fleur. – DW
***
