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It has been a rough and absolutely horrible weekend! On Friday morning, my mom went out the garage to go to work, and she heard meowing. She went to the end of the deck to see what was going on, and there was a tiny kitten lying on the sidewalk. She put it on a rag on the deck, hoping its mother would come back for it, and woke me up to keep an eye on it. About 10:00 am (two hours later) no cat had come for it, so I knew I needed to run to the pet store to get formula. I went outside to get the kitten so I could put it on the pet carrier and leave it inside. When I picked it up, I seen it had a patch of maggots on its neck. I was freaking out because I figured it had a wound. On closer inspection of the kitten though, what I thought was mud on his fur, was actually fly eggs. I tried to sit there and pick all of the live maggots plus eggs off this kitten. There were literally thousands of eggs on him. It was the grossest thing I’ve ever seen, like something straight out of a horror movie. It was making me sick to my stomach, and I don’t get queasy too easily. Every new place I looked there was more eggs, and there were maggots around his a**s and in his umbilical cord opening. I knew I couldn’t clean him up myself, so I took him to the vet. The vet washed all the maggots off, and gave him some medicine to kill any maggots still on him. I found out he was a male, probably only two days old, so named him Balthazar. They fed him at the vet’s, and said he seemed strong, but that was the last good news I would hear all weekend. Neither my mom nor I could get him to eat. We tried forcing the bottle into his mouth, but he wouldn’t have anything to do with it. I was up every three hours that night, trying to feed him, but he wouldn’t take it. We took him to the vet the next morning, and the woman there got him to eat a little. I thought it must be a good sign that he ate a little, but he just seemed to get weaker. He died a few hours later. I was trying to feed him, but he wasn’t eating, so I put him back in the carrier. He started opening his mouth real wide, so I thought maybe he was looking to suckle, so I picked him up again and tried to feed him. He still wouldn’t eat, and he kept opening his mouth. Come to find out, he must just have been gasping for breath on the edge of death. He died right in my hand. A newborn kitten, the epitome of cuteness, innocence, and helplessness, gasped his last breath in my ******** hand. I can’t get those images out of my head. I feel this kitten was left on our sidewalk for a reason, and I failed. I feel like a total failure at life in general, and like I’ll never be able to do anything right ever again. This kitten was in this world for such a short time, and I feel he was only here long enough to know suffering. I hope with all my being that there is a God, and that Balthazar is in a better place. Because what if there isn’t a God? That would mean that kitten was born into suffering, and then died, just ceased to exist. The thought makes me sick. I feel so responsible, like I should have and could have done more. I had no experience with a situation like this, so that certainly didn’t help. I was ignorant, but I tried, but those things aren’t excuses when you have a life in your hands. As mean as it may sound, a part of me hopes it wasn’t my fault, and that the kitten was sick and there was nothing I could do to save it. I hope that God brought him here for a reason, but that it was because he couldn’t be saved, but my job was to clean him up and give him a decent, humane death. The fact that he was covered with flies means he was marked by death, I suppose. I still can’t help feel the full responsibility of it though. But then again, I probably should. This is a pretty condensed version of the account, and is lacking a lot of my emotions too. It’s been a few days since the death, and I’ve just reached this numb stage where I don’t really want to talk about it, but I still needed to write it down. I needed to record the account, if only so it’s so I can look back upon this later and remember Balthazar, and remember that I’m a failure, and that I shouldn’t be alive, because my life is no better than his, and I should die for not saving him. This just reaffirms that death is the only certain and secure thing, and that life in this world is one huge ******** cruel joke.
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