Veiled Chunk Heartbroken

I am sitting here completely stunned and have barely composed myself enough to write this.

As you can see from the UPDATE to the Kitten Quandary, below, I decided that I cannot take Sher with me back to Cairo. My colleague gave me the information for the clinic where I can get her fixed-up, though, and I intended to take here there (if I saw her around the office, again) and then try to find a nice home for her, here in Kabul.

Well tragedy just struck. Actually, Sher just struck tragedy.

I was sitting on the couch reading, waiting for the office to be cleaned and for my officemate to arrive, and I could HEAR my baby crying. I thought I was crazy. I followed the noise outside until I saw not one cat, but two: Sher, sitting on a roof crying to her friend (sibling?), another kitten stuck very high on a very small branch in a tree (tail puffed-out, really scared). I went to get my officemate, who'd just arrived, to show him the predicament, and when we went back outside, Sher had attempted a *brave rescue mission* to retrieve her cohort. This meant, though, that she was in the tree, too. Exactly what I was concerned would happen, did, which is that Sher saw me and tried to get to me (meaning: defy gravity by walking DOWN a tree).

Sher fell face-first (but you know cats more or less rotate) more than 5 meters and CRASHED in a pile on the ground. There was a "CRACK" when she landed that no kitty should ever make. Her skull? The left front leg that she landed on? Her teeth? She landed only a few feet in front of me and it was like I was instantly about to cry and throw up and run to her at the same time.

I didn't know what happened to her, exactly, but she hoveled off (is that a verb?) underneath the side of the building, eyes-closed, silent, breathing stalted. I was terrified. I ran into the office, stole my officemate's phone (mine has no credit after a 10 minute and 10 DOLLAR call to Desi in Bombay, last night), and immediately called the vet: "We need medical attention for Sher and a rescuer for the other cat who had to watch the horrible fall and is STILL stuck in the tree (about 10 meters up, at least!)."

I'll skip the drama about the vet, transportation officers at my office, and the ridiculousness that ensued, but GET THIS: my officemate wanted to check that Sher could walk, and so he nudged her a bit, and she hobbled (THERE's the verb!) off and went to hide underneath one of our SUVs. I was talking to her, consoling her, and told the guy whose job it is to water the dirt in the driveway (so it stays as mud and does not turn into dust) NOT to spray the cat (WHO HE SAW ME TALKING TO UNDERNEATH THE CAR). I went into the office for no more than 1 minute to get the phone, and when I came out, the cat was gone and ground underneath her auto-haven was wet. AHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We engaged in a multi-person search, I tracked mud all over the office, and Sher is gone (probably scared, wet, and in serious need of medical attention).

The vet will be here in an hour (after a struggle with the bureaucracy of my office in which I was neither allowed a car nor allowed to leave the premises WITHOUT a car -- ie: take a taxi, I offered the vet to pay for his taxi to come here, after which my office gave me a car and security...go figure!), and we don't know where the cat is.

The only good thing is that the other cat, who was stranded in an even more precarious position, appears to have wisely resisted the temptation to climb back down the center of the tree, and instead elected to jump OUT onto the roof below (this option was not apparent to the cat for the first 20 minutes or so, but I guess Sher's fall forced it to reevaluate its egress routes).

Anyway, I feel much better after typing this. I was *again* the ridiculous-values foreigner, in tears over this cat that I basically made fall from a tree. God I can't keep thinking about that cracking sound.

I hope Sher is ok. She was so brave to try to save her friend!

I can NEVER have a child. I would strap it in a bullet-proof flack-jacket to my chest and make it wear a helmet and have like 10 bodyguards!

EVERYONE PRAY FOR SHER! (and keep up the good work for Justice Stevens!)

{note to self: given that I am a member of no church or official religious group, and I know for a fact that several of my readers believe in no higher power, why has my blog at times sounded like an internet prayer chain?}

VC