It's nearly pitch black out tonight, between the new moon, and the smoke from the Washington forest fires (it's been a problem south of us for days; but just finally reached us today), but we went out to check it out (firearms ready of course... This IS north Idaho) ... And still couldn't see a damn thing; but we could certainly hear it.
When we went out to investigate we disturbed a large animal of some kind, and several smaller ones; which jumped and ran away (the large animal running all the way down into the lake); leaving behind a terrified wailing little thing:
Who instantly jumped into Mels arms, and started purring.
Apparently, after the first one, it's gone around stray cat circles that we're a bit of a soft touch for a sob story...
She's a black female, green eyes, unspayed, and as you can see there, she has a fairly distinctive feature: She's got no tail.
It looks like her tailless state is from a non-surgical amputation at about the second tail vertebrae. It's fully healed and grown over, but it was definitely a post birth injury, and not surgical.
She's pure black, and hasn't been declawed; but her claws are clean, not ragged, and seem to have been trimmed at least once.
She's only about a foot long nose to tail root, and if she weighs two pounds I'd be surprised. From her size and state of maturity, I'd call her four to five months old.
She's completely clean, no matting of the fur; no sign of mites, lice, fleas or ticks (or any other visible infection or parasite), and seemingly has no other injuries.
She does have what seems to be a bit of inflammation at the rectum (we're keeping her isolated from the other animals); but her stool seems clean and healthy, but very dry and firm (she may be dehydrated, and she certainly attacked the bowl of water we gave her).
She's also incredibly affectionate, very purry, very curious, and very vocal.
She's housebroken... in fact, she started looking for a litterbox shortly after we brought her into the house; and the second we gave her one, she used it.
Oh, and VERY VERY HUNGRY... but apparently unused to wet food:
As with the last one... who is now a permanent (and very happy) member of our household by the way... clearly, this is a well socialized, well cared for cat, that someone is probably missing.
Unfortunately, also as with the last one, we haven't seen any posters around, and no-one local posted anything on craigslist or in the pennysaver...
Tomorrow (or later today I guess, given it's now 3am) we'll ask around the neighbors, go to the local vet, put some up notices, check the local free paper and pay paper again, call local animal control etc...
Funny thing, having a lost and damaged little black cat show up needing our help, right at this time in our lives, and on the eve of the autumnal equinox.
Well... Another opportunity to pay it forward.
