“He’s probably going to die, Sweetie,” she said, reaching out to hug her daughter. “I’m sorry. He is very, very sick, and we didn’t want him to be alone.”
“Okay,” Sweetie said, hugging her mother back.
They put his shoe box in the bathroom next to the heat register and sat down to dinner. It was a somber affair, nothing like a typical Christmas Eve filled to bursting with a young child’s noisy anticipation. They ate slowly, and their conversation seemed halfhearted. Every few minutes, Vicki and Sweetie tiptoed to the bathroom to check on the little black kitten. He had stopped convulsing and retching, but his panting was so shallow they could barely tell he was alive. He seemed to be struggling for every breath. And four hours after his rescue, he still hadn’t opened his eyes.
They left Michael’s house just after nine o’clock. Vicki had finally reached a twenty-four-hour emergency veterinary phone service, and they recommended buying some kind of protein, blending it down to liquid, and seeing if the kitten would eat a few drops. So on the way home, they stopped at a convenience store that was just shutting for Christmas. Sweetie, still wide awake, waited with the kitten in the car. “We can’t leave him alone, Mommy,” she said.
The store had one jar of meat-based baby food. Vicki bought it, along with an eyedropper. She tried to give the kitten a drop of the brown mush, but he gagged. She diluted the baby food again and again, until it was practically water, and finally, about 11:00 P.M., he kept down two drops. That was his limit: two drops of protein water.
“It’s time for bed, Sweetie,” Vicki said, once the kitten was tucked into his towel.
“But, Mommy . . .” the little girl started to protest, not wanting to leave the kitten, but she was so tired she couldn’t fight any longer. She was asleep by the time she reached the bed.
Vicki kissed her good night—Merry Christmas, she thought—and made herself a cup of tea. Every hour on the hour, all through the night, she fed the kitten a few drops of diluted baby food. Each time, when she saw him lying motionless on his side, her heart clenched and she feared he was dead. But as she approached, he started to shift his head. He let her push open his mouth (he still hadn’t opened his eyes) and squeeze two drops down his throat. Then she went back to the couch, turned on some Christmas music, and tried to stay awake for another hour.
She must have crashed after the 4:00 A.M. feeding, because the next thing she knew, it was Christmas morning. She leapt off the couch and rushed to the bathroom, where she had left the kitten in his blanket in front of the heat register. As soon as she saw him, she gasped. He was standing on four very shaky legs, trying to tip himself over the edge of the shoe box.
“What’s wrong, Mommy?” Her daughter trembled in the doorway.
“Oh, Sweetie, look! He’s alive. The kitten is alive.”
Vicki put her arm around her daughter, and together they watched as the kitten gathered himself on spindly legs and, with great effort, stepped one shaking paw out of the box. He pulled a second leg over, rested for a moment, looked at them with tired eyes. Then he turned back to his task and, with one final shaking lunge, pulled himself free.
Toys and gifts were forgotten. Russian tea (a combination of powdered tea, orange drink mix, and spices that was Vicki’s favorite) and hot chocolate were neglected. For the rest of the day, they watched their Christmas miracle. The kitten spent most of the time on his side, since he was so weak, but whenever Sweetie and Vicki brought the eyedropper over, he pushed himself onto his front knees and stretched out his neck. Vicki had never seen a four-year-old child so gentle and careful, or a kitten more determined to succeed. By the afternoon, Christmas Cat, as they named him (or CC, as they called him), was swallowing three or four drops of brown protein water at a time. They were keeping him alive drop by drop, and every hour he was getting stronger. When Sweetie fell asleep that night, her last question was about CC, the Christmas Cat.
“Is he going to be okay?”
“I hope so, Sweetie. You were wonderful.”
The girl smiled. Vicki tucked her in, turned off all the lights except the Christmas tree, turned on the radio, and sat on the sofa, rubbing her thumb along the kitten’s skinny side. He’s going to live, she thought, as music floated around them and the tree sparkled in the purple blackness of an eighteen-hour Alaska winter night. He’s really going to live. She shook her head in wonder, surprised both by his survival and by how much she cared.
The day after Christmas, a Saturday, she finally reached a veterinarian. The next open appointment was three days away, but the veterinarian assured her she was doing everything right. “Just keep up your regimen,” she said. “It’s worked so far.”
On Monday, Vicki went back to work. She had used up her sick days because of some recent health issues, and as a single mother she couldn’t afford to take time off. So every few hours, on her morning break, lunch hour, and afternoon break, she rushed home to feed Christmas Cat a few drops of his watery meal. Her coworkers thought it was hysterical. For weeks, she had been complaining nonstop about adopting the cats. “I don’t know why I’m doing this,” she’d say, shaking her head. “I hope my daughter appreciates this sacrifice,” she’d proclaim, as if she were giving her daughter one of her kidneys or something. Now here she was dashing home every few hours so that she could nurse a nearly dead kitten back to health.
“I thought you didn’t like cats,” her coworkers said, howling with laughter when they saw her tearing off her scarf and jacket.
“I don’t,” she said. “I really don’t. But what can I do?” She was telling the truth: She still didn’t like cats. She just happened to like CC. Why? Because helping him had become her project. Because he had proven himself to her. Because he had personality, toughness, and an incredible will to live. As soon as he could stand, even trembling and weak, he had thrown himself over the edge of his box. He wasn’t broken; he wasn’t giving up. He wasn’t . . . soft. And Vicki Kluever admired that.
By the time she visited the veterinarian’s office, it had been four days since the accident. Four times she had tried to give CC a bite of food with a little texture, but each time he had thrown up immediately, so she was still feeding him a few diluted drops of baby food at a time. Four drops of liquid was the most he could handle.
“Something’s wrong,” the veterinarian said. She pressed the kitten’s side and his stomach, which was almost nonexistent. There was no way Christmas Cat weighed more than a pound. “He’s never going to gain weight on a liquid diet. He can’t get enough nutrients. I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head, “but he’s starving to death.” She made a note on his chart, then looked at Vicki, who was clearly in shock. “Why don’t you leave him here with me?”
“Why? What are you going to do?”
“We’ll run some tests,” she said. “We’ll do what’s best for him.”
Instantly, Vicki snatched CC off the table and wrapped him in her arms. He was trembling, and Vicki might have been, too. “No,” she said, turning her shoulder toward the veterinarian in a protective gesture. “No way. We have come this far, and we are going to see this through.” She could feel her anger rising, her indignation. This woman didn’t believe. This woman wanted to kill her cat!
“No,” she said. “We are not giving up.” Then, nearly shaking with fury and unable to think of anything else to say, she whirled around and walked out of the office.