I hold her up, look her squarely in the face, and ask her what she has done
with Maria.  Maria--are you in there?  Maria?  No answer.  Only a trembling
stranger in my hands, peering at me with small deep dark eyes.  I kiss an
orange-yellow nose.
 
Where is the half naked burnt purple girl with sores all over her, and
tissue thick and rubbery-shaped all crinkled like a brain?  Maria????
How could this be?  Who could have taken her?
 
Who is this impostor?  Should I show her to the door?
 
She has an undercoat-a dark one-of stubby bristly fur running down her back
in a wide stripe like a skunk.  The orange yellow fur that had remained in
her possession through extreme stress, burning, and adrenal, has almost
entirely been replaced with sparse fine soft gray fur on the bottom half.
And the top half is very dark brown!.
 
Scars on the top of her head, top of her neck and base of her neck, and
middle of her back run all the way across, where it appears an animal bit
her several times: Stub- fur grows around the raised white scar tissue.  A
white bib is forming below her head-spills beneath her chin and down her
chest.  Another scar running down the top of her head leaves a fine white
blaze of naked skin.
 
The !!- gigantic- !! vulva with pus goblets dripping off of it is a
greatly reduced vulva with blood.  It is still so large that she has
injured it.  Staples line the belly.  Fur is growing on paws.  The tail
is a naked stubby thing.  One thing still the same.
 
Where is that weird rubbery smell?  I sniff this ferret.  She smells
faintly musky.
 
This is NOT Maria.  This is a furred animal.  And she shakes when I pick
her up.  Maria does not shake.  Maria kisses and kisses me.  So what if I
dropped her off to total strangers after all she has been through to have
her gut cut open?  So what if I left her with strangers at the hospital
for two whole days only weeks after burning alive with no water?  I mean,
get over it!
 
Maaaan- Whatz up with this?  I had her signed up at the ferret fair to go
as an exotic breed--the Miniature Greyhound-Ferret.  We were a shoe in.
Well, at least a sock.
 
In my hands is a shaking 6 or 7 year old ferret with long reed like legs
and a high shapely weasel arch.  The nose is overly long and pink and off
to one side.  Jimmy Durante/Ha-cha-cha-cha-cha.  The greyhound form is
great.  But-there is fur on an animal half naked just a month ago!  She
is Not conforming to my new exotic breed!
 
Maria?  Where are YOU?  Where is the rubbery, funny smelling, pus dripping
naked girl who has slept nestled beside me at night and tinkled all over
me?  That is how I see you.  THAT is how I know you.
 
I search for the fleas that pop up in the air and scurried down your body,
and the multiple sores.  All gone.  kiss kiss a teensy pink ear.  The
quaking frame quiets in my hands.  Observing her eye-I see no hope there.
No sparkle, or reflection, or glimmer.  Instead; a dull black.  Old dead
eye.  Her eye would look like this if she were dead.
 
Maybe there is still hope brimming behind a wall of burning, desertion,
loss of family, isolation, thirst, loneliness, uncertainty: fear.  Pain.
Maybe this is how old burnt eyes look.  What do I know?
 
I cradle one of a zillion animals that has taken up oxygen in the world.
Probably too old to live much longer.  It cannot toil for me, nor can I
eat it.  It is useless: just another one of the millions of disposable
pets that is dumped.  Why not just kill it?
 
We need to make more room in this world for the people in a pet store that
would let an animal burn to death in their store window.  We need more
oxygen for the family that dumped this thing in front of a pet store.
 
I feel the warmth of her body in the crook of my arm.  She screams and
moans in her sleep, you know.  The vet at Midwest Exotic was most concerned
about the bubbles that showed up on both of Marias x-rays.  This was the
main reason she felt surgery should be done so soon.
 
Maria suffered from malnutrition to such an extent that, that when they
went in and took a look-the vet said it was not a lump or a growth that
caused the bubbled appearance.  It had to have been malnutrition.
 
Maria will not be entering the exotics ring as a miniature greyhound ferret
this year.  No prizes at the fair.
 
Just a chance for a normal life.  And a possiblity that one day I will hold
her up and look into her tiny eyes, and see more reflected back at me more
than the months and years of suffering of a "disposable pet."
[Posted in FML issue 3487]