The Story of Olive
She's sooooo needy.
The Via Flaminia is a road that hearkens back to Ancient Rome, rife with potholes, congested with traffic, and narrow enough to give you a splitting headache if you try to navigate its two lanes of meandering madness during rush hour. For long swaths of the Flaminia, all you see is countryside or those weedy, markerless places that spring up around gas stations or railroad tracks. In May of 2019, we passed just such a place on our way to Rome.
The plan was this: John was recording a new project in the studio; me, my daughter, and a friend were going to see what kind of trouble we could get into while he worked. As we came around a curve, we saw a not uncommon sight: a run-over kitty, which can sometimes send me into gales of tears.
I’m a huge softie. I admit it. Creatures depend on us to take care of them, so when I see one dead in the middle of the road, it can really spin me out. I also lost a kitten on Christmas Day, huddled in a crowded veterinary clinic along with two dozen other sobbing pet owners. There are people too gentle to live in this world, and I’m probably one of them.
My first instinct was to keep going. My daughter is just as tender-hearted, and I didn’t want her to see a dead kitty. But John and I looked at each other, and I knew what he was thinking. That kitty might not be dead. But if we left it out there, the creature was doomed.
John’s even more of a softie than I am, and that’s really saying something. His love for creatures extends into the insect kingdom, which is pretty much where I draw the line. He stopped the car and went running out in traffic, one sock on and one sock off. I ran after him. We could see the tiny tortie struggling to cross the road, dragging its crushed back legs behind it.
Our car blocked traffic on the lane behind us, so I stopped traffic in the other lane while John retrieved the kitty. It was covered in its own poo and panting heavily. People waited with uncharacteristic patience as he brought the kitty to the car and I scrambled to find something, anything, to put her on. The lease for our apartment was in the glove box for some reason. I used that.
I held the kitten on my lap, crying already, never much good in a crisis, while John drove like a madman to the next town. “There’s a veterinary clinic,” he said. “We can make it.”
But the kitty didn’t look so good. Its eyes were glassy. Its sides heaved. I was convinced it would die, and then I would never stop crying. My daughter’s vacation would be ruined, my friend would never talk to me again, and I wouldn’t be able to scrub the memory from my brain.
John located the vet’s office, Dr. Andrea Falzini of Clinica Veterinaria, and we rushed inside. The receptionist took one look at the kitty and yelled for help. Two assistants ran out, whisking her away. No one asked our names. No one asked about insurance. They just took the kitty, without question, intent on saving it.
After John helped clean all the poo off my clothes, we waited. I worried about what this would cost us, two freelance artists with chronic money problems. Then I worried about not worrying more, because the truth was, I just wanted the little kitty to live.
The vet brought us back to his office. In his rippling Italian, he explained that the four-month-old kitty (a she-kitty, by the way, female like most torties) had a broken leg, severed at the hip. Her front paw was bandaged where they’d enclosed a tiny pouch of IV fluids. He didn’t know if she would make it, but kittens tended to heal quickly. Unfortunately, the clinic wasn’t equipped to handle overnight patients.
Yet she was alive. And I was already in love with her. Torties look like baby monkeys when they’re kittens; only later do they come into their lush beautiful colors. This monkey gazed up at me and John so trustingly; we were both hopelessly smitten.
We also have another cat, Bunny Lebowski, a sassy, independent thing, who was used to being queen. Two female cats in the same house? Well, it was anybody’s guess how that might turn out. The vet gave us a carrying case for Olive (a name my daughter gave her) and when we went to pay, they charged us nothing. NOTHING. I was so overwhelmed by their kindness, I started crying again.
Now, two years later, Olive is a chubby, needy, uncoordinated little squeak-box that drives Bunny crazy. For the first month, Bunny iced us out. She wouldn’t purr. She’d barely look at us. But at this point, if she and Olive aren’t chasing each other around the house, they’re cuddled up next to one another. Olive watches in sick envy as Bunny gracefully leaps from the back of the couch to the top of the armoire where she peers down disapprovingly at the Lesser Creetchur. Olive also lost part of her tail in the accident, so now it’s stick-straight and moves up and down like a dented traffic arm. She’ll never be sleek and athletic like Bunny, who is clearly the Audrey Hepburn of kitties, but I don’t think Olive knows it. Probably better that way.
One night, Olive got stuck in the shower (she loves the shower) and heard John opening a can of food. Here’s what the shower door looks like now.
The only thing more pathetic than Olive is me, for loving her and Bunny so much. It’s not like cats deserve our love. John and I take bets as to whose eyeballs they’d eat first in the event of our deaths. Yet here we are, trundling all the way out to Viterbo to get them the “good” food. Because we’re suckers, and we know it.
I KNOW you have some pet stories. Hit me with your best one in the comments below!
Back in the 00's when I was a grad student at SIUC, I lived in a trailer, in a trailer park, that was getting over run by feral cats. So on my own dime I started a TNR (Trap Neuter Return) program. My regular vet was willing to work with feral cats. So when I left, the population was entirely controlled, the cats still there were all fat and lazy. But one in particular attached itself to my friend Toni. So when I was out trying to get an academic job, Toni moved -- twice -- taking this tuxedo male with her. When I returned to So. IL, I landed in (an actual travel) trailer in her back yard. The tuxedo -- B&W, or just "Keekee" -- is still here. He's raggedy as hell, but still kickin', 16 y.o.
I love this story so much! Olive is one lucky kitty-cat.