The neighbors were finally there — the ones whose site had been adjacent the entire time he'd been camped, occupied so rarely that rswfire had never actually met them until that day. They told him there had been two kittens, not one. Both had been circling his RV while he was down at the Natural Bridge. He turned that over: he could have helped her sooner if he'd known. He had not seen the second one. He said aloud what he was thinking, that it probably hadn't survived, and named it as sad, and left it there.
He was driving to a drugstore when he said it. He had finally reached the veterinarian who had been recommended to him, and the call had produced a full instruction set — Pedialyte given orally, an enema, a flea bath the other vet hadn't called for, a list of other directives, and an appointment Monday. He did not weigh the two vets against each other or select among the instructions. He said he was going to follow them all, and drove to buy what the list required.
Back inside the RV, the protocol met the animal. She hadn't responded to him at first — aware, he noted, but wanting only to sleep. He gave her the Pedialyte and she was unhappy about it. He talked to her continuously while he worked, and the talk carried the whole weight of it: hang in there, keep fighting, this is very important, you may not give up, you are so precious. He told her to stay warm and called that very important too. She refused the upper level of the enclosure, and he laughed at her for it. She ate. He kept refreshing the food even knowing she didn't need all of it. He said he was worried, then said it again with more force — absolutely beside himself — and then, without resolving any of it, decided she needed rest and stepped back to let her have it. She gave him a small meow. He registered it as an event. He noted he still had to give her a name.
The metrics he ran alongside the vet's list were his own and continuous. The litter box: she had investigated it earlier and not used it, so he didn't know. Later she used the bathroom, near the box but not in it, and he cleaned it up and counted it — first time that day, and he stated that mattered if she was going to get better. He put a new blanket in the enclosure. She wasn't happy to be contained, and tried to get out whenever he opened it. He assessed her against the earlier version of herself: she looked a little better, and she seemed a little shaky. He told her he was watching her closely, like a hawk, and then set the night's schedule out loud — up every two hours to check, feeding every three or four, though he allowed that it would probably be two, because he tried to feed her all the time anyway.
Bastian arrived at the edge of it — what's going on, who is that — and the first contact between the resident cat and the new one began under rswfire's direct management. He held both sides of the introduction at once, telling Bastian not to scare her, telling her she didn't need to worry, that Bastian was a big baby who simply wasn't used to her yet.
The floor of the RV was covered in DVDs. He'd been downsizing for a while, working a sequence toward something smaller, and then the kitten showed up and reordered it. He named the disruption plainly — it messed with his plans — and in the same breath said he was getting very close, that he didn't have a lot more to deal with, and that this little cat had motivated him. There was food from the drugstore run, bought while he was buying her supplies, and he was starving. He kept catching himself calling her him and correcting to her; he hadn't had a girl cat since he was a kid.
He was recording all of it to camera, and acknowledged the limit of that — the time he spent with her on the iPad, the actual sitting with her, couldn't be filmed while holding the camera. He told whoever would watch that he'd report in the morning on how she was doing. Then he went back to it: she was choosing the dry food over the wet, and he was asking her about it, half amused. What's that about. You found it. All right, if you want to eat those. The night's watch had not begun yet. It was about to.