Gentleness Is a Choice

I guess I’ll never understand what lies behind animal cruelty. Intentional animal abuse seems to have deep connections to severe psychological problems. Scientific studies reveal that people with psychopathic personality disorders have a tendency to

torture pets and other small animals, but they may also show similar aggression towards humans. In spite of all of the scientifically proven facts, I simply can't figure out how a human being could intentionally hurt sentient creatures, much less those who

are the most helpless and innocent. It’s incomprehensible and yet it is happening, almost every day.

Stray cats are far too often the easy targets of abuse and cruelty. Friendly and trusting kitties are always at a special risk, as they approach everyone

showing love and affection, mistakenly thinking that all people are good. Many of them pay for their bad judgment with their lives. Most of the surviving ones become cautious and unapproachable, yet a few continue to behave as if nothing had happened, no

matter how much pain they have endured. Okac is one of those ever-friendly ones.

He was brought to me as a four-month-old kitten, skinny and dirty, with a horribly injured eye. Someone had obviously tried to gouge his eye out and

then maybe got interrupted in their despicable, cruel, horrendous act. They left a kitten with an eye covered in blood and in terrible pain. I had no problem catching him, he let me pick him up as if he had known me forever. He was quickly rushed to the

vet and it turned out that his third eye lid was torn, which caused the loose piece hanging out of the corner of his eye. During his first third eye lid surgery, his third eye lid was stitched up but it didn’t heal properly and he couldn’t close his eye, so he had to endure three more surgeries over the next few years in order to fix this issue.

The biggest problem with surgical interventions is that all of the muscles are relaxed when a cat is under general

anesthesia, so it’s not easy for the vets to accurately estimate how much tissue should be removed. Finally, Okac had been diagnosed with secondary dry eye syndrome and secondary entropion as the result of the trauma. There was no point in another

surgery, as he wouldn’t have gotten any better. Vets managed to save the sight in his eye, but we don’t really know how good his vision in that eye is, it’s probably damaged to some degree. He still has some dark discharge from his injured eye and is

under antibiotic treatment whenever his eye discharge becomes even darker or too abundant.

After that first eye surgery, Okac was living in my garage and didn’t want to go outside for quite some time. The first time he went for a walk,

trusting and loving as always, he returned with a broken hip – someone had probably brutally kicked him. He obviously approached that evil person trustfully, with no fear at all. Some kitties never learn…

Okac’s hip hadn’t

been operated on; I took my outgoing, affectionate, lovable little boy to my apartment and he was the best patient one could imagine. He was just lying still and resting, hardly ever getting up. He managed to recover on his own, as cage rest and leaving a

dislocated hip to sort itself out by forming a 'false joint'' produce almost as good a result as extensive surgery. His broken bones healed on their own; he was limping for months afterwards, but he now runs and jumps like any other cat.

Despite all of the horrible things that have happened to him, Okac continues to love people. He is evidently one of those rare, special kitties that return evil with good and although he paid a terrible price for his gentleness, he hasn’t changed a bit. He is calm, quiet,

loving and cuddly, there is not a trace of bitterness or fear in him. Had he stayed on the street, he would have been dead years ago, as his noble nature couldn’t be altered, no matter what. His life on the street did leave scars on his body, but not a single one on his

mind.

We can learn a lot from cats, especially from cats like Okac. Can you even imagine what a wonderful world it would be if it was inhabited by people who are not vindictive, hateful or deceitful, if it was populated by pure,

gentle, sincere and outgoing people with open minds and open hearts? It would really be a world worth living in.