Snoqualmie

Slow down part II.

Scruffy, the orange stray cat that Jacob and I feed, got hit by a car on Saturday morning. She's fine. That's astounding.

We found her about noon on Saturday, halfway up a tree and looking freaked-out. Jacob slunk up a ladder to extract her, at which point we realized that her face was scratched up and her claws were broken. Our downstairs neighbor opined that, since she beat up his boxer puppy without breaking a sweat, it must have been a bear that she ran into. When we put her down and saw her limping we figured it was time to take her to the vet.

"Cat fight," we told the vet, "maybe?" She grilled us about what we'd noticed and then shook her head. When she flattened Scruffy's hind paws we could see that the claws had been ground down to nothing. The vet explained that when cats get hit by cars they grab onto the pavement and get their claws shredded. Then, if they're Scruffy, they panic and run up a tree to get away from the street. Without claws it's impossible to climb down a tree slowly, and with aching paws I can't imagine that jumping is an option. This is apparently how you get a cat stuck in a tree.

Here's where I'm astounded. Scruffy is 12. She only weighs 7 pounds. She's been a homeless street cat for at least a year, and she just got hit by something a thousand times her mass. The only things wrong with her, according to the exhaustive tests we had done on Saturday, are sore feet, tooth decay, and slight dehydration. She's been relaxing in our study, in a velvet-lined shoebox nest, feasting on tuna and gravy-infused water (hey, we need to get her to drink, right?). I'm convinced that she really is some kind of queenly cat immortal, an undamageable supercat. Even going through lives like crazy can't explain how she's so healthy. I'm hoping it'll rub off on me, either through continual contact or faithful tuna-based supplication.

In other news, I'm in the market for a computer monitor since mine tendered an unexpected resignation yesterday. Recommendations for used-parts stores, and offers to sell old crappy monitors for $50, are welcome.