PUNKINHEAD

This is my cat, Punkinhead, aka Purrhead, Meowhead, Sillyhead and the Big Meow. I found her in a warehouse about 16 years ago. She came running out of a dark corner with one leg dangling and her left eyeball skewed out of the eye socket. I couldn't just leave her to fend for herself, so I took her home, and to a vet. He thought perhaps a dog had attacked her, grabbed her by her front left leg with a tooth in her eye socket, and shook her as animals will. There was no saving her eye, so that came out and he sewed it up, put a splint on her leg and in about 8 weeks she was fine. She was an outdoor cat, and even with her Elizabethan collar on she was hunting furry and feathered beasts. Children in the neighborhood would come up to me and say they had seen her in a tree stalking birds.







So one day she didn't come home. A couple of days later she showed up with a broken tail. No idea how that happened, but she was in a lot of pain. Again, there was no saving the tail -can't really put a splint on a tail - so we amputated it, and now she has about a 2"-3" stump. And she will use it! She waves it back and forth, or it will stand straight up, or be tucked under when she's sleeping, which is most of the time nowadays. I had to move from the house where she could go outside, and into a 2nd floor apartment. The co-op board did not approve of me letting her outside, so now she is confined to my studio space. It was hard on her to begin with, but after a year or two she became settled as an indoor cat, although I still fell guilty about curtailing her life like that. Now she explores various sleeping places and positions.









It's not easy being a cat, is it, sleepyhead? Big Purrhead. Silly little Punkinhead.