Karnak Street Kats

Shackleton, my orange and white, male cat, insists on going outside. Actually, he slips between my ankles whenever I open the front door. He never stays out too long. When he wants in, he jumps up on the porch bannister and looks in one of the tall windows that flank the front door. I usually spot him as I work at my computer.

After Shack dashes out, he does a quick survey of the front yard, especially the bird feeder (too high for him to reach), gets a drink from the birdbath on the ground (for cats, not birds), then back on the porch to watch the yard. Sometimes, he stops to nibble some grass, so that when he comes in he can throw up on the furniture.

While Shack is small for a male, he is full of energy and seldom wants to be held. He misses my mother, I think, because he likes to sit in her chair. When Mom was alive, she was Shack's special person. Shack does climb into my lap for attention about once a day. (If you want to learn about Shack's arrival, click here.)

One day as I held him, I noticed a swelling on the side of his head just below his eye. I felt the area; it was hard and unyielding. Shack did not like my exam and wiggled away, but the area did not seem particularly tender. I was worried. Lumps on cats can herald cancer. Off to my vet we went.

My vet was not sure what was wrong. He kept Shackleton for observation, but started him on an injectable antibiotic. Shack stayed three days. The lump decreased in size slightly. All of the tests came back showing no abnormalities. Shack came home to finish the antibiotic regimen. If the lump was not gone by the time the antibiotic was, my vet would do a biopsy.

The lump was smaller, but did not grow smaller once Shack came home. I examined him every day, growing more and more worried. On the next to last day of the antibiotic regimen, I ran my fingers lightly over the lump. My fingers felt something. I looked carefully. There was something barely visible in Shack's fur protruding out of his cheek.

I held Shack as I found my tweezers. He did not protest as I pulled the object from his cheek. It was the pointed end of spear grass. The same grass that I had thrown at playmates in my childhood. I called my vet and told him. He agreed with me that Shack had eaten some spear grass and gotten the end embedded in his cheek where it worked its way from the inside out.

I continued the antibiotic, and with the spear removed, Shack's lump disappeared. He is healthy. I spent my free time in the next few days prowling the yard for spear grass. I removed all I found. A year has passed, and Shack has not been speared again.