Stevie

During the summer of 1999 my nephew, Joey, was working for a local pool company servicing and maintaining public and private pools. One day he happened to have a house on his route where the owner's child had brought home 2 days old kittens. The parents, not knowing or not caring what to do with them, told the child to put them outside. Now these are DAYS OLD kittens. They should be nursing, but god knows where the mother was or where they came from. We will never know.

Joey arrived at this house and went around back to do routine service on the pool. On the pool deck he encountered the remains of one of these small kittens. It has lain so long on the concrete, in the hot sun, that it was literally baked into the pool deck. Being a bone-fide cat lover, Joey was sickened, but there was nothing he could do for this little guy. Going about his job, Joey proceeded to open up the housing for the pool filtering system, inside he found Stevie.

Somehow this little baby had managed to crawl over to the side and fall into the pool. He was so small that he was sucked into the filtering system and had been there so long that he left an impression of his body in the filter! Joey quickly picked him up and checked to see if he was breathing. He was! So he raced over to my house with Stevie and off to the vet we went. Waterlogged, half drowned and extremely mal-nourished, suffering, naturally, from an upper respiratory infection, Stevie was not in good shape. With meds in hand I was told to take him home and we would have to wait and see. His survival would be a miracle.

The next few months were tough. I spent many nights holding him and listening to his raspy breathing, wondering just how much damage had been done to his lungs. Although he took to the bottle fine, and began to gain weight, we had other problems to deal with. Stevie's sinus cavaties developed scar tissue from the prolonged exposure of the chlorine. He still has the occassional runny nose that requires wiping. I do not have the words to describe how small and helpless this kitten was when brought to me but, as you can see, he is doing fine.

Stevie continued to do well for quite some time. In fact, for over a year. He then began to develop sores in his mouth and other ailments that we treated as they came up. The minor ailments eventually progressed and his poor little body could no longer fight off the effects of the chlorine and other toxins he inhaled while in the pool filter and his internal organs began to fail. We helped Stevie, peacefully, cross the bridge on January 12, 2003. He is greatly missed by everyone.

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