Goodbye Little Ball Moss

About two months ago Little Sparta, a cute adorable kitty, came bouncing into our lives.  This little kitty

The little family, Little Bit, Sparta, Rowan

wasn't like the normal kitties you run into.  He had a family.  Sparta was part of a litter of at least four other kitties.   The other three died within a few weeks after they were born.

Little Sparta was cute and bouncy at first.  Unlike most cats his Mama, Little Bit, and his father, Rowan, worked together to take care of him.  One day I picked him up.   He was grey and really resembled a hunk of ball moss.  He was about the same size, shape, and color as ball moss.  I gave him the nick name Ball Moss.

Sparta Waving Bye

When I picked up little Ball Moss, I noticed he had a lot of crunchy stuff around his neck.  We took him inside and tried to bathe it off of him.  Some of it came off.  Then Suzanne gave him a bath in vinegar and water and more came off.  I sat down with a brush and vinegar water and noticed that these things were actually some sort of larvae. After a while, we managed to get all the larvae off of him.  He lived outside with his parents.  Then one day we noticed he had gone blind.  Really he was very low vision.  Some type of allergy was causing him to have major mucus secretions from his eyes.  His inner eyelids stayed shut most of the time and from time to time would open up just a little bit.  It was during those times he could see.

He remained very little.  Our other indoor kitty, Xerxes, was a few weeks older than Sparta but was about four times as big as he was.  Sparta just did not grow.  He ate a lot.  In fact, he ate more than Xerxes.  A few days ago, Sparta stopped eating and was unable to poop.  We tried everything to get him to be able to poop.  We made sure he was drinking water and we fed him little bits of pumpkin by placing it on his tongue.  We prayed for little Sparta but it was not in God's plan for him to live.

Now little Sparta has gone to Rainbow Bridge with so many other animals we have had.  It is sad that this happened.  We will miss little Sparta.  We buried him with his green yarn and a little toy ball with a bell in it.  He played with the yarn while he was alive but was never able to play with the ball.

We located the place to bury him in our yard by noticing that there was one, and only one, hunk of ball moss in the yard.  We dug his grave where that ball moss was.  I feel like he chose where he wanted to be buried.

Good bye, little Ball Moss.  Daddy loves you.

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