June 9, 2009– P.P.
After all this time, it was finally P.P.’s turn to be neutered. Our wonderful local country vet is giving me a good deal, as they tend to so often do, knowing full well all of our animals are rescues and a profit is never, ever made.
P.P., the ginger cat is the remaining member of a large feral cat colony living at a farm. Last summer some man was going to ‘do away’ with the cats, so a friend and I went and loaded up over a dozen carriers with utterly wild cats. From the second P.P. was trapped, he began peeing all over the cage and rolling around wildly trying to escape, causing him to smell wretched, thus, he was dubbed “Pee Pee.”
Giving the cat this silly moniker didn’t seem a bad thing to do at the time. We had close to twenty wild cats, and a few litters of kittens, and frankly, we were running out of names. Pee Pee was to be adopted out with all the others, after sterilization. Unfortunately, Pee Pee escaped his confines and ran loose in our barn. Admittedly, I’ve grown attached to him, and so he has stayed. We have been preoccupied with spaying female cats, and P.P. was pushed to the back of the sterilization list. Until today!
Yesterday a friend and I drove Pee Pee to the clinic. When the vet asked what the cat’s name was, I had to confess and she laughed. Does it help that we’ve changed the spelling to P.P.? I felt awful leaving him behind. It took months to tame this cat. The feline who wouldn’t even remain in the barn or loft if a human was present, now greets us at the barn door, rubs against our large dog, purrs when he is pet and simply cannot get enough affection. And the cat who once rolled in his own urine to flee human contact, now let me put him straight into a carrier. I worry he will never trust me again.
That said, these operations are quick, the vets are great, and soon P.P. will be like the other seven cats here in the barn, worry-free, their surgeries nothing but distant memories. It will keep him from wandering, from fighting other cats, and in addition to helping the pet over-population problem, it will probably prolong his life.
