Tuesday, August 5, 2008

People of the Internet, Meet Norah!

This morning's walk brought an unusual encounter. I was feet away from turning off the road and heading up the driveway when, even over the music from my ipod that I play well louder than the surgeon general recommends, I heard what sounded like a screeching bird. I pulled the buds out of my ears and followed the sound. I knew right off that it was coming from the ground and was sounding less and less like a bird.

There, in the ditch on the side of the road was a little kitten running toward me caterwauling at the top of its lungs. If you have been reading the blog for awhile you might have gathered that we don't really live very near anyone or anything. I got the sense that the little cat had been dumped. At the very least she (as we came to find out) had been fending for herself for a goodly portion of time. She has some nearly healed wounds, one on her lip and one on her toe. She was more burr than fur and we still haven't picked them all out yet. As of this writing she has proven herself to be fearless, almost to a fault, smart, hungry and loving. I hope when we take her to the vet everything checks out OK. Her belly is very distended (could be from near starvation), her ears are a bit scabby and I know she is full of bugs.

So, for those of you keeping track at home, Norah, as we have come to call her, makes us a five cat household.

Norah having a drink after we fed her. Russell is not OK with this. Neither is Una or Lily. I would say they are furious. I had a wee bit of hope that Norah might bring out some nurturing instinct is someone here but, no.

Norah crashed out after spending much of the day out in the Sister House with Tom and Matt. In fact, wherever Tom and loud noises were to be found, so could Norah be found. I checked to see if she could hear because I thought it was strange that she didn't flinch when the air gun was in use. She can hear. She just doesn't care.


I have a bit of video of her first few minutes in the house. The second half of the video is really too dark to see anything but that isn't really the point. I was trying to capture the sounds she was making while she ate. Such sad, mewing, grunting noises. Make sure you watch it with the sound on.

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