Remember back when I first caught Shachori, back when my Ema and brother were visiting, and we passed her off to the new vet Tzachi? He was supposed to fix her and fix her leg. He had her for several days and he told me that she had already been fixed and that her ear was clipped. Granted with black cats flitting about on the street, it is difficult to tell if the ear has been clipped, signifying that they have been spayed or neutered, or not. I certainly had never remembered her ear being clipped. But, yes, he told me, the ear is already clipped so no need for spaying. Then he brought her back, I saw the ear was indeed clipped, but then she escaped the apartment. I recaptured her about a month ago, several weeks after she had freed herself, and she has been in my apartment ever since. One of the things I noticed was that her clipped ear was quite sensitive and very much not fully healed from its clipping. I didn’t think much of it.

Until the last 24 hours. Because you see, demur little 6-month-old Shachori is beside herself. She is running around the apartment making “that” sound –the constant mrrr mrrr mrreeeuueeeee of a cat in heat and distressed. She is attempting to uhhh entice the boys who mostly don’t know what to do with her and are running from her except for Arie who, though fixed himself, seems to think he is not and is trying to figure out what he should be doing though isn’t entirely sure. He is nearly as persistently unsure but trying as she is herself. She is grooming uh certain parts of her body constantly. And last but not least when I came home this evening I found her lying on my bed and later, after she got up, I found a bit of blood on my duvet –something that happens only when a female cat goes into heat –where she had been laying.

Finally, I remembered that clipped ear that still isn’t 100% healed and I’m thinking about the bare patch of hair on her arm from the shaving he did for her bloodwork that, though the hair is growing in finally, is still clearly visible. And I’m thinking about the fact that she has no bare patch on her tummy. Tinok had a clearly bare/very much shorter and stand-out-ish patch on her tummy for several months –visible far longer than her ear remained unhealed. And I’m really wondering if Shachori is really fixed.