my man cobweb

Last year I had a cat for three and a half days.  At about 10AM September 25 I saw a pale cat that I had never seen before lying in my backyard, which is not really the behavior I would expect from an unfamiliar stray cat.  I went out with a cup of food and I started formulating how I was gonna befriend him, as with every stray cat I encounter, and I was making noise, and I wasn't seeing any reaction from him.  Eventually I walked right up to him and presented him with the food, and he might've fussed a little at what to him was my sudden appearance but he started eating.  When I saw his eyes they were deathly foggy and white, which I realized was mucus.  And he was small.  A kitten?  A zombie.  You could see the contour of his skeleton; he was in a bad bad way.  I decided I had to bring him in or he would die out here.  He was like an empty tin can to carry, light and with the corrugation of his ribs.

I set him up with food, water, a blanket, and a litter box that he never opted to use; he ended up settling in the pantry.  Eventually we got him some soft wet old-cat food (at some point we figured from his teeth that he was old rather than young).  He slept all of the first day.  I started bringing a washcloth and warm water when I visited him to wipe the mucus from his face.  He was mostly white, with spots of gray tabby; his ears sort of curved out to the sides, and I never very clearly saw his eyes but they seemed blue, despite that I'm told adult cats don't have blue eyes.  His meow was sort of a wheezing honk and I heard it whenever I was standing up and depriving him of a lap to lie in.  That was all he wanted to do.  An old man sleeping in his chair.

He did start walking around more.  Trying to smell things, though he probably couldn't.  He was curious about the other cats, but was kept away from them on account of his illness.  He was getting better.

In the afternoon of the fourth day he was put down.  I was away.  Apparently he'd had a seizure or something; he was on the floor in a weird position, and he was moving in a weird way, and it was morbid and wrong and miserable, and when I got home he was buried.

I was so sure he was getting better, and I was just mad, for months, whenever I thought about it, that I couldn't have done more and kept him alive and healed him, that veterinary bills are so expensive that any kind of visit or consultation was out of the question.  That could've saved him.  And where did he come from?  I still feel like he was ditched by somebody who didn't want to take care of him.  I kind of wish I'd got a clipping of his fur, Victorian style.  He was cool.