This article was written by Wendy.

Mr. Face thrives… He is master of the second floor, and though he proves he can go UP stairs (if you take him down a few and place him there), he has no interest whatsoever in going DOWN stairs… He will sit and cry at the top of the staircase when he feels neglected, and though we call and cajole from below, he just sits and bitches.
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Mr. Face rapidly propels himself to the front of the pack at the Vogel household. He is neck and neck in the running for “best cat” threatened only by Ringo… but he smells better than Ringo which gives him the competetive edge.
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Tonight Mr. Face met Donetta the animal psychic. She came to our horse barn for a demonstration and everyone thought he’d be a great candidate for a reading.

Donetta is a very cool lady who has been listenening to animals since she was a child. She likes to touch the animals when she’s communicating with them, and spoke with a dog and two horses in addition to Mr. Face.
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Mr. Face rapidly progresses. He is master of the upstairs, free from all restraints and closed doors. Blind, as always (anybody got a spare cat retina?), he knows where his food and litterbox are, where the scratching post is, and most importantly, where the bed is. He is quite the cuddlebug, and spends all night (and likely most of the day) comfortably ensconced on our bed. The mystery of the stairs continues to elude him… won’t even attempt them, and seems to wonder why we have a bottomless pit at the edge of the hallway. He must have lived in a ranch house in his former life.

The remaining cats are of varied opinion on his continued presence… Ringo is his buddy and they have congenial sniffs daily. Oliver is deathly afraid of him and creeps around on his rare ventures upstairs, running at the sight of him. Merrick pretends he doesn’t exist and refuses to come upstairs at all, preferring to poop in the dining room as an expression of his distain for all things Face.

Dolly is learning about electricity… because Face can’t eat at the high table with the rest of the fat boys, his food stays on the ground… an irrisistable temptation for dogs. So Dolly wears an invisible fence collar which responds to an indoor transmitter which creates a “no-fly zone” around Face’s dish… so far she has run from the beeping, but it’s only a matter of time before the zap gets her. How many zaps until she learns to not eat cat food? We’ll keep you posted.

In short, Face is a normal cat. He seems to have a happy little life… dull, perhaps, but safe and warm and loved. It’s been a long road to get here, but we are richer for his presence.

See pictures of Mr. Face here. To read the rest of the articles about Mr. Face, please click here.

On Thursday, March 21, 2002, Wendy took out the wire that was holding Mr. Face’s broken lower jaw together to allow it to heal.

Wendy reported that the wire wasn’t doing much, since it was put in when his jaw was terribly swollen. When the swelling went down, the wire wasn’t as tight as it could have been. Wendy was leery of knocking Mr. Face out again to tighten the wire, so we just made do. She reports that the jaw is healing ‘pretty well’, and that there is some independent movement of the sides of the jaw (which isn’t good), but Wendy is confident that it will eventually heal completely. She noticed that one of his teeth was badly broken during the accident and will eventually need to be removed.

While he was knocked out, Wendy did an examination of his eye and found his retina ‘floating’, which means that his eye is broken and he will never see out of it again. He’s going to be a blind cat forever.

Mr. Face was a little disoriented when he came home (completely understandable!), but tucked right into his food when we gave it to him, and his mouth (minus the wire) worked very well.

See pictures of Mr. Face here. To read the rest of the articles about Mr. Face, please click here.

Work continues inside his little brain as he slowly rejoins the land of the living. This morning Drew went in to feed him his morning can of A/D (the highlight of both their days), and found Mr. Face sitting happily OUTSIDE the playpen. We wondered if somehow we had forgotten to put him back in it last night before bed, but his escape artistry was confirmed when I got up and again found him contentedly sitting outside the pen.

Obviously he is ready for more freedom, so the playpen is scrapped (in storage for the next sickie, or God forbid, a real baby) and we got a big plastic mat on which to place his food and litter box. Now Mr. Face has free run of the spare bedroom and seems to be quite happy about it. He has no vision at all, but somehow he found the only sunbeam on the floor to sleep in.

He has developed (returned to?) quite a fetching little personality now that he’s more than just a purring thing in a box that we pet… he’s curious and quite loving. It’s doubtful that he’ll ever see a thing (the eye is fine, but the nerves to his brain are decidedly NOT), but is adjusting well to his blindness. Such amazing critters are cats.

I wonder if, when he was an outside stray — cold and hungry and maybe lonely, perhaps he wished for a loving family and a warm place to sleep and all the food he could imagine. I wonder if he thinks the price he paid was worth it?

See pictures of Mr. Face here. To read the rest of the articles about Mr. Face, please click here.