The Cat Who Came in From the Cold

You ever see those shows on the Discovery Channel or Nature on PBS where biologists are tracking animals using radio collars? I saw one recently about Jaguars in the so-called "Necklace" in Central and South America. This one biologist, Alan Rubenstein, a jewish guy from New York City of all places, was working diligently with national governments in the area to create a protected area for the Jaguars.

Part of his long time study was to keep track of the migration patterns of the big cats to better understand their environment. He did this with radio collars. He would go out with a team of trackers, they would find a large cat, shoot it with a tranquilizer and afix one of these collars.

Naturally, I'm thinking, I want to do this to my cats. Not because I want to tranquilize them. I've done that before. It's not much fun. But because I would love to see where they go when they're not around. I'm so curious how wide their meanderings take them.

This curiousity is intesntified whenever Fil doesn't come home at sunset and I have to go out looking for her, which is often. With a radio collar, I could pin her down in no time flat.

The other night, she didn't come home. Mak was inside with me. At about 9 o'clock I see this little face pop up at my window. It's her. I quickly go outside and snatch her out of the cold. As soon as I pick her up, I realize something is wrong. For one thing, she's growling at me, which she never does. For another thing, she's got all these rough spots on her tail which is normally smooth as silk.

As soon as I get her in the room I do a full inspection. She's got burrs and prickly things sticking out all over her body. The poor thing must have fallen into a cactus or something equally nefarious. I started pulling the burrs out of her body (there was a horrible one right at the base of her tail) and she continues to growl at me until I get them all out and then goes to skulk over in the corner and becomes very anti-social, which she has been ever since. She's never around during the day and the sleeps alone in the top of the garage at night, refusing to come down even with the offer of treats.

I feel horrible, because I think she's angry with me because I "caused" her so much pain by removing the burrs, but what could I do?