Augustus started coming to my door almost seven years ago. It breaks my heart to think about how emaciated he was when I first saw him, nothing but gorgeous black fur and bones, huge yellow eyes peeking out from his angular face.
He had bright green snot coming from his nose and from the corners of his eyes. He was incredibly skittish, something he retains to this day with strangers and even with me if I talk to loudly or make any big, sudden movements (one time I had plastic goggles on and he looked at me like a stranger, his pupils dilating and his fur poofing up).
I knew that between his timid nature and my paralysis it would be incredibly difficult to get him to the vet so I just kept feeding him until one day when he came by and I noticed something glistening on his fur. I touched it with my finger, and it smeared bright red: blood. He sneezed, and a spray of it went onto the concrete beneath him. Around this time I had also noticed spots of wetness wherever he walked, so it was definitely time to take him to the vet.
The man I was dating at the time somehow managed to get a hold of Aggie and we got him to the vet. When the vet saw him she said in a voice that I could tell was trying to mask the surprise, “Is he eating well?” I told her that Aggie was a stray, and the concern seemed to drop from her face. Not that she wasn’t worried for him, but that she no longer thought he was being neglected at home. He got some antibiotics and then she got a look at his feet. The paw pads were swollen and cracked, and filled with dirt and pebbles. They cleaned his feet out as best they could and bandaged him up, unsure of what was going on with his feet and told us to come back in a week.
What followed was a merry-go-round of cat chasing, paw cleaning and comical wrapping of all four of a cat’s paws that went on for a few weeks. Eventually they just wrapped the back paws because he would tear the front ones off right away. We were advised to not put an Elizabethan collar on a semi-feral cat due to safety issues (couldn’t keep him inside worth a damn, he’s like quicksilver). His feet, however, just would not heal and kept cracking and bleeding. He was given antibiotics for them to no avail; the vet said perhaps it was a sort of cancer, and they’d have to take a biopsy. That was the last time I took him to that vet.
Next up was a home vet, one who had already diagnosed my other cat’s food allergies without even looking at her. Trial one with Aggie didn’t go very well; the vet ended up with a bloody hand, no cat and a bunch of claw sheaths. The sheaths were big and blackened; “The whole damn thing almost came off!” he exclaimed as he put them in a test tube. I eventually got Aggie in the right light, position and comfort level (scared of the camera) to where I could take a few pictures of his paw pads and send them to the home vet. “That’s plasma cell pododermatitis,” he said to me the next time we talked on the phone. What Aggie needed was not antibiotics, but steroids.
Wouldn’t you know it. A couple of weeks went by and the swelling began to recede. I was worried about the dirt and pebbles but those seemed to work themselves out. A month later and Aggie, feet no longer cracked and bleeding, played with a mousie with me for the first time. I was ecstatic; I had never seen that playful side of him.
Aggie has turned into the most affectionate cat I’ve ever known, and I don’t think anybody knows this but me. I’ve never seen him get comfortable with anyone else, to the point where now I realize that that is dangerous for him because he needs someone besides me to take him to the vet. So, my mom is trying to get close to him. But that’s an uphill battle because she’s the one who had to capture him a month ago for another vet visit, this one for an abscessed cat bite on the neck…
With me, he sleeps on my lap, or next to me in bed, curled against my lower back. If I’m lying flat on my back he’ll jump up on the bed, walk up next to my chest and just fall over on me like a big ol’ redwood. I pull him all the way up on to my chest and he nestles his head against the bottom of my chin and purrs something fierce. I’ve never had a male cat before and I’m always bowled over by the strength of his affections. He seems to totally let himself go in the lovin’s, but he is quicker than a shot to bolt off of me if he hears something he doesn’t like.
Most people who see him only see him from the other side of the glass; they try to pet him and get frustrated when he runs away. I wish I could tell them about the life he’s lived; I wish I could tell them he was almost dead when I found him. I wish they knew how far he’s come.
I wonder myself, where did he come from? How did he come to almost die until he found someone who would feed him? Did someone abandon him because of his personality, or his stubborn, bloody feet? He was neutered when he came to me so he was someone’s at some point. My apartment complex allows cats where many do not, and people often leave their cats here when they move; was this his story?
I’ll never know. All I do know is that I’ve now got a robust, beautiful, black male kitty cat who loves me like nothing else. So, of course, I will be inspired by him to make a jewelry piece (Oh yeah, this was about jewelry).
I’ve made a cat charm necklace. The kitty charm in the middle is Rhodium-plated. Various beads live in the dangles that surround it and include white cat’s eye beads, hematite, glass pearls and acrylic lilies. The hematite and lilies are particularly nice here because to me they symbolize his nature which is both strong and sweet. This piece is one of a kind and handmade with care. The charms hang from a gunmetal chain.
Thanks for reading this far, and if you’d like to see my other pieces please visit my shop on Etsy at
https://www.etsy.com/.... I’ve also got a new shop dedicated solely to gemstone chips called Chips Are Down:
https://www.etsy.com/...