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Early one morning as I was driving to work, I noticed a gray hunk of fur atop the 3 foot
concrete divider of the parkway that I take to work. As I sped by, I realized that what
I just saw was a cat, all huddled up, too scared to move, with cars speeding by her on both
sides. I pulled over as soon as I could, and made my way back to where she was. I was
afraid she would attempt to run off either side at any moment. I had to wait at least 5
minutes until there was enough of a break in traffic to run across the 3 lanes. When
I got to her, she just froze, and I picked her up, hung on to her hard, afraid she would
panic and try to run. Instead, she grabbed onto me as hard as I grabbed her! She put both
front paws practically around my neck and hung on for dear life.
I had to wait another 5 minutes or
so for another break in traffic to get back to my car. She clung to me the whole time.
While I waited, I looked her over. She was almost all gray, with lighter and darker
patches all over her. She had long hair, too. I had always wanted a long haired cat.
She had a horrible scrape down the length of her back, from her shoulders to her
hips, about 2 to 3 inches wide, a large ugly wound that was mostly scabbed over. When I
finally got her back to the side of the road, there were another car or two that had
stopped to check out the situation.
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One driver told me that he had seen "something" there early that morning on his way to work some hours earlier, but didn't know what it was. Now, when he saw me trying to get her, he realized that what he had seen 7 or 8 hours earlier, was this cat! The other driver thought he knew someone that would take her, and offered to take her, but by this time, with her clinging to me, trusting me with her life, I was already hooked on her emotionally, like she was "hooked" on me physically!
I drove to work, looked in the phone book for a local vet (I was now about 30 miles from home). I took her there as soon as they'd see her.
The vet said she had a "degloving" wound down her back. This meant that all the skin had been scraped off. She also looked as if she had been declawed, since she had no claws on all four paws. The vet wanted to keep her for the day, clean up her wounds, give her a thorough exam, do whatever she needed. So I left her there, very worried, and very anxious to get her home as soon as I could. I told Diane about her that morning, and told her, "I WANT HER!!". I was always the one saying "we have enough cats already!", but I had become instantly "attached" the moment I first picked her up.
When the vet called, he said he had to give her an enema (she was all blocked inside), he had given her a bath, and he cleaned up her wounds. When I picked her up, he taught me how to dress her wounds until the skin grew back. She had to wear a gauze sleeve around her body (we called it her "sweater") to keep her from licking it too much, and to keep it clean and medicated. Every night, I would spend time with her, re-doing her dressings, petting her endlessly, with her on my lap. She grew to love "daddy's jeans", and knew when I had my bluejeans on, it meant we'd spend time together. It also turned out that she wasn't gray at all, just filthy! After the bath, she was a beautiful white with black and brown patches, and a cute black smudge off one side of her nose. During the many weeks of daily dressing changes and cleaning, we became even more attached to each other.
Her nails grew back in a short time, and her back healed up eventually. She still has no fur where the scars are. We figured that she had been hit by a car days before I found her, and perhaps had been dragged underneath, hence the missing claws. They had been worn down to nothing. I cringe to this day at the thought of what must have happened to her.
Kelli got her name from a soap opera star from Ryan's Hope that I ..uh .. my wife used to
watch
(Kelli Maroney played "Kim").
I found Kelli on March 1st, 1983. She's still "daddy's girl", although she has learned to tolerate Diane's presence.
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