Homme Chaton

Hello. Thank you for stopping by to read this. We appreciate it. The reason for this particular blog post is to ask for help. On Monday night, 20th August 2012, this little fellow, Man Kitten, had an accident.

Also known as Homme Chaton, or Junior as is his given name, he is our middle cat. We have five cats, you see. We didn't set out to have five cats, but we are of the species 'suckers', subset 'for a cute face'. Man Kitten is our almost four year old neutered boy cat; our other cats are all girls, two older, two younger (the sister kittens).

Manly is allowed outside. It's a reasonably safe neighbourhood, and we are at the end of a quiet dead-end street. Homme likes to venture over the fence, though, and was hit by a car late Monday night. He managed to get himself home as far as the back fence, and then just cried until I heard him and came out to investigate.


When I found him in the bushes under a tree, he was scared and delirious with pain. He has bad eyesight in his left eye from scarring from when he had flu as a baby. It's how I ended up with him; no one else would adopt a partially sighted kitten. It was Christmas and the rescue centre owner just didn't know what to do with him. I volunteer there, and she knew we technically had a 'vacancy', having a lost a cat in November to renal failure. Not that I was bullied into it, but you know how these things can play out!

He couldn't tell who I was as I approached, and he tried to take off, so I spoke to him in low and calm voice to show him it was me, his human. He calmed down, and started to tell me all about it. I could see he was broken and knew immediately that only a car could do the kind of damage he had sustained. My heart sank, but straight away I told him it was OK, that I would fix it. In the back of my mind I hoped I wasn't telling him a lie. I hate lies.

The local vet took x-rays in the morning on Tuesday and the bad news was that he had broken his pelvis in a really convincing manner. 'Complicated' has been the term used by each vet who has spoken to us about it. And they admitted straight away that it was well outside their expertise to repair. It was at this point we were told he would need specialist care if he was going to be fixed. We were asked about insurance. The answer was 'no'. We don't have the money to pay for insurance for five cats. Maybe in this day and age that's dumb. But that's life. We don't have that kind cash flow. We have jobs, and we have debts. Huge debts. So something like pet insurance is not something we can afford. In the same way we can't afford the numbers that started flowing from the veterinarians mouth as she quoted us prices to repair Man Kitten's wrecked pelvis.

Tuesday and Wednesday were spent worrying about nerve damage to his bladder, or damage to his internal organs. Only a certain amount can be done to fix those things, and he could not continue to live a full and healthy life if something like his bladder was damaged. I found waiting to find out about this very stressful, and maybe I cried. I might have also prayed. Whilst crying. It wasn't pretty, I assure you. The cost of surgery to fix him was only in the back of my mind, but it was never something I wanted to let cloud the decisions we would need to make about his future. I knew that if he could be fixed, I wanted to go ahead and try. The money would come.

On Thursday we were told it was time to refer him. His bladder seemed intact, and whilst there was a question mark over the condition of his bowel and, ahem, his back passage, if his bladder was OK, then there was every chance his bowel was too. So we picked him up from the local vet, settled the bill, and took him to the specialist. Which brings us to today. It is Friday evening and I should be working. I work all day and all night these days. Instead I am writing this. Because today my cat had surgery which costs well over £2000. At the end of all this the bill is going to look a lot like £3000. Like I say, we work. We have jobs. But because of a lot of history which we can't really go into here on the internet, we have a mother-load of debt. It is where all our money goes. I work 100 hour weeks at the moment, for less than the minimum wage. The debt isn't anything sordid; it's a very honourable kind of debt. But it is still huge. Honourably huge. It was all for a very good cause, but bloody hell it is hard work paying it off.

And now this. This crazy stupid thing of paying thousands of pounds for a cat to be fixed. I mean, he's just a cat, right? Surely this is madness?

But they are never 'just a cat'.

He's Man Kitten. He's Homme Chaton. He's my little musical theatre loving wet drip of boy cat. He's soppy and sooky and loving and ridiculous. He loves his sister kittens and they love him. He's kind to other cats, all of them, even Monkey, and she's a cow who deserves a good cat slap if anything. His favourite thing in the whole wide world is to watch something being printed on the printer, for crying out loud.

Which brings me to the crux of the matter. I am asking for help. Help to pay for his surgery. It's already happened, so there is no risk of it not being done. But I kinda gotta pay the bill, now. He's got a massive amount of recovery ahead of him, and it's not going to be plain sailing from here. There will be follow-up appointments, and many more x-rays on an ongoing basis. But right now, well, some time next week, we've got to present the vet with however much money the bill totals up to in order to be able to bring the little guy home.

If you can help, even just a tiny bit, then thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. I can't offer you anything in return. I'm sorry about that. I wish I didn't have to ask in the first place. It's actually really embarrassing. But I kind of don't have much of a choice, so I have to put my shame and embarrassment to one side, and just ask.

Thank you for reading. If you can share a link to this blog post on your own blog or on Twitter or Facebook, then that would be amazing.  Let me know if you do so, so that I can thank you.

I'll post updates when I can. At this point he might get to come home on Tuesday, but that is only if he has recovered enough and the specialist is happy with how he is going. Personally, I can't wait to see him again. I saw him yesterday and it was fantastic. I think the feeling was mutual. He loves me. I love him. To quote a meerkat; simples.