One of our cats, Caelynn, chewed through the Christmas tree lights
and got electrocuted. She didn't die (but it would've been easier).
We actually didn't know what had happened . . . just that she reeked
of death and she was oozing puss out of her white lips and whitish-
gray tongue. We took her to the vet . . . He knew immediately it was an
electrical burn. (I went home later and found the plug with two wires
chewed through with melted flesh and cat hair still attached.) The
vet seemed to think she could fully recover, but would require surgery
to remove her necrotic lips (on one side) and the tip of her tongue.
With surgery, after care, and medication . . . let's just say it was
going to be pricey.
How much is a cat worth? Hmmm. My husband and I debated it for a while and decided to go ahead with the surgery. I
know many of you are thinking, "Why? It's just a dumb cat." Well, we
figured it was our choice to have a pet and we'd better take
responsibility for her. So, this happened around December 8th,
surgery on the 10th, home on the 13th, back in the hospital on the
15th (bit threw her tongue, lots of blood), and then lots of syringe
feeding, antibiotics, pain meds, and decongestion meds (she caught a
cold, too).
Our invalid cat goes missing on December 20th around 4:30PM. Our cat have been previously having diarrhea accidents all over the house and Christian had to give her a bath, which she hated. Kids may have let her outside (unknown factor at the time). We figured she may have
felt she'd been tortured enough by us. We missed a fun Christmas
party :0(. We searched for the cat in every nook and cranny of house
and I cased neighborhood until 11PM. We prayed a dozen times a piece
(each member of family). Sunday morning, I posted "LOST CAT" signs
all over our neighborhood and on the neighborhood website. More
prayers. We go to church, sing in choir, do callings, tithing
settlement, missionaries for dinner . . . more family prayers for the
cat.
WELL . . . just before we turned in for bed . . . around 9:40PM . . .
I hear a "Meow, Meow" coming from the upper room where we had been keeping her. It has been 29 hours since we have seen or heard from our dumb cat. She was stuck in-between the food storage #10 can boxes I had stacked 2 deep side by side to create a bed frame for our queen-sized bed in our guest room. She had located a 2 1/2 inch by 5 inch space between the boxes (THE ONLY SPACE VISABLE) and crawled in the center of my food storage bed frame which had another space approximately 10" square. BUT . . . it gets better. Our cats had
previously torn several holes in the bottom of the box frame of the
bed (which was now resting on the boxes) when we had previously had
the mattress and box springs on a regular bed frame. She had been
hanging out in the box frame, which she had accessed through that tiny
2 1/2 by 5 inch hole . . . only she couldn't quite get out. So I
helped her out and hugged her and all the kids hugged her and we all
said prayers to thank Heavenly Father for our Christmas miracle. Then
I tried to get her to eat some soft wet food and drink some water and
gave her the antibiotics and pain meds and locked her up in the room.
Oh . . . and we shoved a towel in that tiny crawl space so THAT
doesn't happen again.
This Christmas I am grateful for PRAYER and Heavenly Father's tender mercies. AND I am grateful for our dumb cat.
Funny that none of this stuff made it into our Christmas newsletter.
This year the Moody Family Christmas Party--Orange County, was at my uncle Stan and aunt Cheri's home in Laguna Beach. It felt great to finally get together with some family for the holidays. We had soup and salad as well as Christmas goodies. The Moody's are a talented group and we are always treated to some great guitar music and Christmas serenades. Of course, we all sing Christmas carols together at the end. They must have had 4 guitars, at least. It really made it fun. Our kids also played a few of the Christmas songs they have been learning on the piano.
This year, our family (the Capeners) added a little more to musical feast and sang "The World Was Waiting" for the extended family. It was fun to do that as a family.
We all played a few fun games like "match the present" (you get to keep the gifts if you match two presents) and the unwrapping dice game (the present is wrapped 10 X and you get to unwrap a layer with gloves on if you roll doubles).
