Author: Laura Highcove

Copper got half of her left ear burned off. Since cartilage doesn’t heal, it simply fell off. She had the deepest burns on her back just above her shoulder and on her front right leg.

And except for the first surgery which was mostly to remove the burnt hair and clean up the wounds a bit, everything healed basically on its own. Of course she’s young, and the vet said her growth was probably stunted quite a bit, but she seems to have come through this just fine.

I would like to thank Companion Animal Clinic, who made this whole process really painless and pretty cheap. Especially Dr. McCormick who took care of her, kept us in the loop, and even came in on his day off when her stitches came loose.

So Monday night we had a bit of a oil fire. Nothing serious, we had watched a Mythbusters recently about how oil fires and water are a nono, so it was smothered with a lid instead. Anyway, I came home for lunch and walked in the door and smelled burnt. I figured it was leftover lingerings of the night before since I had been out of the house and was now just coming back I smelled it more intensely. I was about to wash my hands when Matthew comes up from downstairs and tells me in his rather rare (when he’s not mad at me or someone else) serious voice, to ‘come downstairs, now’. So down we go to the basement and he tells me “She’s stuck in there.” My first thought is, “Oh, the cat managed to run downstairs when he had the door open…but where would she be stuck that has him all grr?”

But oddly enough he pointed to the furnace and handed me a knife. Apparently our hopper of an orange kitten had pulled up a vent cover in the great room, traveled down the tubing, and managed to get herself right on top of the furnace. When it turned itself on in an attempt to keep us warm, Matthew had begun smelling the burnt smell I smelled on coming home, which was apparently not lingerings, but burnt cat hair.

In any case I hopped right up and with superior vertical advantage sliced through the duct tape between the metal pipes and out popped an orange head, which I immediately grabbed and yanked out. Copper had a large black mass of burnt fur on the back of her neck just behind her head and as we took her upstairs to go immediately to the vet I noticed that one of her ears had shrunk around the edge and sort of curled in on itself.

She is spending the night with the vets who commented on how lucky she was that we got her out of there before too much damage appeared to have been done (though apparently with animals burns work a bit differently.) and that she was very sore, on painkillers, and not yet eating or drinking (though they are giving her fluids under the skin). The vet did seem fairly confidant that we’d be able to take her home and care for her here as long as she begins eating again. I’ll find out later this morning.

I think too much.

I went out and in some wandering found a playground I’d never seen before. I climbed onto the swings and began swinging back and forth. I closed my eyes and tried to just feel the wind rush past me as I went higher and higher, but I was unable to not think about how the swings were creaking and there was a possibility that the support poles could come loose and the swing set could fall. Or the chain was old and could break, spilling me out onto the ground. Or that the chain was entirely not comfortable to hold onto, or that the swing itself crushed the sides of my hips.

When I was a kid, none of this stuff ever occurred to me. I was too busy having fun.