Kayla Quote: "I hang out with anyone who gives me balance." Tracy Morgan, Comedian, People Magazine, 4/8/11
Short Synopsis: Neither Mike nor I went to the hospital during the day. I tried to call in for reports but they kept saying, "The nurse is busy." On the third try, I asked, "Is my daughter ok?" Yes, absolutely they said - "We are just very busy bringing in new patients. The nurses are very busy."
Mike likes to get reports from me how Kayla is doing. He was growing impatient with the lack of news. It was 11 pm in the evening and I came home after my show practice and no Mike. This was totally out of character for him. He is methodical and he is always in the door at 10 pm after his gym work-out. I called his cell and he answered,
"Look out the window. I am driving in the driveway. I just saw Kayla."
"Great! I want a report!"
The Long Story: Michael said they were beginning to take her off the sedation and little by little she was coming up. It's been nearly 2 weeks that they have had her in an induced sort of coma. It's all geared to rest the heart for healing.
Mike was happy. Kayla was doing little things with her fingers. She was fluttering her eyes and trying to open them but was quite tired. The trauma to her body from the arrest and the four surgeries clearly has taken its toll. She is tired.
"They say the lung injury is completely resolved. It's all healed."
Then Mike told me an interesting tale. At 6 am Monday morning, he looked out his bathroom window into our back yard as he was shaving for the day. There was a mother coyote or fox, he did not know which, with her four pups. They were in a den under Alice and Steve's blue shed on the property line.
The mother squeezed up out and looked around. She surveyed the scene and then went off to hunt. Then the babies emerged to look around.
I was horrified.....coyotes! Kayla's beloved cats!
There have always been coyotes in the Stonecrest neighborhood. They have been here for years. They live up at the top in the woods and all the neighbors up there have lost all of their cats....all of them. But they have never come down this far. They do come up two fields above where beloved Winnie used to live. For the most part, they only run across our 1.5 acres as they pass through and only occasionally. I have lost 2 cats to them, cats that ventured up into that field.
Now we have three cats that Kayla adores - our rescue French (Maine Coon) one "Le Rheu," our rescued feral Manhattan toughie, "Moo Moo kitty" and our rescue Virginia one, "Trigger" or Babeeeee, as we call him. There is nothing more important to Kayla that these three creatures. She loves them dearly and spends a lot of time with them.
When her heart was increasingly getting weaker over the last 3-4 months, Kayla's entire world had dwindled down to our house. The cats were even more important to her than ever.
I not only had to worry about "the Kayla" in the intensive care unit. I had to figure out what to do with these creatures. I spoke with animal control. I spoke with Art, the wildlife nuisance animal person and I spoke with Chris, an environmental guy with the Department of the Environment in Hartford. I also conferred with Steve Carboni.
First, I needed to know what we had! In the end, Mike took a picture of them. By 7 in the evening, when he arrived home, the pups were all out playing around. They lined themselves up against the shed and watched Mike. They were adorable.
Art wanted to come and set up and shoot them all. It would cost $85.00 to come and $30 per animal for each kill. If I wanted to do it humanely, it would be $30 a day and he would drive around and bring road kill and trap them in traps but that would prove expensive because they know something is up.
I felt sick inside....killing little 9" pups? Umm..... not so sure about that, but then again, I have indoor-outdoor cats. We have a new policy. We lock the cat door at night and they have to stay in. Around dusk we gather them up if they are not already in the house. They get released in the morning. They don't like it and they drive me nuts at around 5 am to be released.
Rheuy is the worst. He grew up on the streets of Le Rheu, France. He was 5 months old when I met him and he knew how to survive. He was also very dirty and emaciated a bit but he loved the neighborhood. He would travel from house to house and one would hear a screen door slam and children excitedly yelling, "Le Chat! Le Chat!" as they let him in for a visit.
I would have to wait my turn for a visit from the street cat but I am an American. And Americans feed stray animals. The French do not. I began to get tidbits of the plates of my family and feed them to him. Soon, he lived in our bushes but he was not allowed in the house as the French family who were in our home in America, by email, told us "Do not let that mangy thing in our home. Our daughter is allergic."
The little creature, who was not particularly pretty, was now mine. I then took him to the vet and asked how I could bring him to America. Apparently, it would be easy. Getting a kitten into New York is easy - but getting one into France is impossible. They have no rabies in France so they do not accept the world's creatures across their border.
I told the senior citizen couple across the street, "No one seems to own this little cat. I think I will take him to America." By that point, I had paid for all of his shots, got the "bells and whistles" booklet with all the proof, had a bag of cat food....you can imagine.
The couple were horrified, "You cannot take our streeeettttt kottt!" I got quiet after that. I would steal him from France. His life there would be no good!
When he came to our North Street home, the first thing he did was rush into the back yard and run into a large flock of black-winged red birds. As they flew up, he lept into the air three feet and plucked one out of the sky. Down to the ground he came with it, firmly in his mouth. Off he went to eat it. Only 5 pounds when he came to America, in one month he grew to 8.
Then he really surprised us! He blossomed from this ugly, typical tabby into a Maine Coon cat with big fluffy squirrel like tail, tips on his ears, black on the back of his legs. He is the one who gets unhappiest if I have to lock him inside.
But, had to do it. Geez....can't tell Kayla about these coyotes!
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