My cat Zena likes to go outside. For Zena, hunting is a sport for which she is constantly training. If
she is not outside hunting and stalking, then she is inside hunting and
stalking the significant numbers of ankles, knees and toes. She runs around through the tall grass, getting covered in sticker burrs and catching small mammals. The usual cat behavior. I let her go out there, and when she brings me live animals, such as the bunny, I make a fuss over what a wonderful hunter Zena is, while I quietly let the critter go on about its business. Sometimes the animal is too far gone, and if that is the case then we place them somewhere that they can either die in peace or recuperate enough to flee.
Last evening, I called to her. I heard something that sounded like a sneeze, then another. Then another sneeze, muffling the sounds of Zena leaping up the fence. My eight pound cat came running to the door sneezing a lot. As she came in, I noticed that she had stuff in her nose, and that is why she was sneezing. Poor widdle kitty, I called as I approached with tissues in hand. That is when I noticed that the snot coming our was a greyish brown. Zena had about three inches of it coming out of her nose, and I figured out that this was not your garden variety of snot. It wasn't even snot. It was a SNAKE. A Texas Blind Snake, which grows up to a foot long.
Let me repeat this. My cat had three inches of SNAKE coming out of her nose, and I wondered where the other six or more inches were. I immediately informed Larry(with his fear of snakes) and told him to stay away. He kept Zane pacified. I had to get that snake out of the cat safely, since she was sneezing so fiercely. I had to think about this.
Zena was sneezing because she had a snake up her nose, right? I decided to grab the SNAKE and help her get it out of there. I had the tissues, and I just reached out, grabbed the snake, and pulled. One more pull after that and the snake was free. I, on the other hand, was in the grip of the heebie-jeebies. I shuddered, too.
I put the wrapped snake on the counter in the kitchen and heaved a
sigh of relief that I wouldn't have to take Zena to the vet to have it
pulled out. The wiggling of the tissue made me realize that the snake
WAS NOT dead! Okay, I jumped a bit, and a curse word might have slipped
out. Then I had the two men in the house wanting to know what was
going on, why I had jumped, was Zena dead, and did the snake die. I got myself together enough to grab the wad of tissue with the
snake in it and carry it into the back yard. I found a place to
release it, which I covered, so that the snake could either recuperate
or die in peace. Meanwhile, I ran upstairs to blog this!
I'm still dealing with a bad case of the heebie-jeebies. What are the odds that a snake would end up in my cats nose, or that I would have to pull that snake out of her nose? I know it's girlie, but right now I keep shivering and saying EEEEEEEWWWWWWW!!!!
Have you ever had to do anything even remotely similiar to this? Or am I the only person on the planet that this has happened to?
