Deuce Is Divested of Both His Rear Legs and Part of His Tail but Somehow Manages to Survive on His Own for More Than Two Months

Deuce

 "He's a total miracle. To think a cat could survive an injury to that degree and then be able to live out in the environment without any kind of food or protection or any kind of health care for four to six weeks." 

-- veterinarian Beth Ruby 

(This story was originally published on September 6, 2011 but since Google is too cheap and stingy in order to provide space for it in the cache on the right, it is being republished today.)

On the evening of August 15, 2011, a group of children at a trailer park located in the 13500 block of Southeast Twenty-Ninth Street in Choctaw, Oklahoma, stumbled upon a malnourished black and white cat with both of his rear legs and part of his tail missing. They contacted the Central Oklahoma Humane Society (COHS) which in turn took to the cat to the Quail Creek Veterinary Clinic in nearby Oklahoma City where he was given the name of Deuce. 

Thanks to the prompt treatment that he received, he was balancing on his front legs and walking around less than forty-eight-hours later.  "He seemed to have figured it out," attending veterinarian Beth Ruby told KOTV of Tulsa on August 17th. (See "Injured Oklahoma Cat Adopts to Life on Two Paws.") "He's compensating much better than we ever thought he would."

He also appears to have a hearty appetite according to a video entitled "Cat Survives Attack," which was posted August 19th on the web site of KOCO-TV of Oklahoma City. (See "Cat Found in Choctaw with Back Legs Cut Off.")

Ruby and her colleagues therefore have reason to believe that he is going to make it although his road to recovery and rehabilitation is going to be a long and hard one. The immediate game plan calls for him to be eventually placed in foster care and later into a permanent home.

Deuce Quickly Learned to Balance on His Front Legs

"He's kind of a motivator out here," Ruby added in the interview with KOTV. "We figured if he can do it, anybody can."

If he has not suffered any internal injuries or picked up any deadly parasites, he should be fine in time. Not only are three-legged cats a common sight, but there is a two-legged one in Monmouth, Illinois, named Trace who, at last check, is doing well.

There is even a cat named Callie Mae in Theodore, Alabama, who does not have any legs at all. (See Cat Defender post of November 17, 2010 entitled "Penniless and Suffering from Two Broken Legs, It Looked Like It Was Curtains for Trace Until Geoffrey Weech Rode to Her Rescue on His White Horse.")

Looking ahead, prostheses, revolutionary bionic implants, and an attachable wheelchair are possible remedies that would allow him to regain his mobility. Money will be an obstacle but hopefully enough donations will be received from the public in order to, as far as it is possible, make this courageous and long-suffering cat whole once again.

Although it is truly amazing that he was able to have survived such a brutal attack, Ruby made an even more astonishing discovery after examining his wounds. Specifically, it now appears that he lost his legs four to six weeks before his plight was noticed by the children.

Deuce Is Able to Get Around on His Own

The pain that he suffered must have been unimaginable and it is truly a miracle that he did not die from the trauma. He also easily could have either bled to death or succumbed to an infection.

In such a debilitated state, he additionally was an easy mark for both animal and human predators. Finally, there was the persistent dilemma of procuring food, water, and shelter from the blistering Oklahoman sun.

"He's a total miracle," Ruby marveled to KOTV in the article cited supra. "To think a cat could survive an injury to that degree and then be able to live out in the environment without any kind of food or protection or any kind of health care for four to six weeks."

Somehow cats like Deuce find a way to survive once hope has evaporated and all apparent avenues of salvation have been sealed off to them. For example, in August of 2005 an orange cat named Hopalong Cassidy from Ellison in British Columbia was forced to drag around a leghold snare for two to three days after he had gotten one of his legs trapped in it. (See Cat Defender post of August 18, 2005 entitled "A Brave Orange Tabby Cat Dubbed Hopalong Cassidy Loses a Limb to a Leghold Trap in British Columbia.")

In December of that same year, a cat named Trapper from the town of Mission in the same province was put through an almost identical excruciating ordeal. (See Cat Defender post of December 24, 2005 entitled "A Cat Named Trapper Falls Victim to Another Rusty Leghold Trap in British Columbia.")

Topper Amazingly Survived

Cats such as Hobson from Harrogate in Yorkshire, Trooper of Uniontown, Pennsylvania, and Que from Queens in Nova Scotia have found themselves trapped for up to six weeks in elastic collars that had slipped from around their necks and lodged in their shoulders and legs. Not only did these deadly devices retard leg movement but they additionally ate away at their flesh. (See Cat Defender posts of June 22, 2010 and May 28, 2008 entitled, respectively, "Hobson Is Forced to Wander Around Yorkshire for Months Trapped in an Elastic Collar That Steadily Was Eating Away at His Shoulder and Leg" and "Collars Turn into Death Traps for Trooper and Que but Both Are Rescued at the Eleventh Hour.")

Opinion is divided as to how Deuce lost his legs and part of his tail. Residents in and around the trailer park suspect that he was the victim of an horrific act of animal cruelty and they have good reason for thinking that way.

In August of 2008, a brown tomcat named Topper belonging to Donna Beasley was shot in the face with an arrow but amazingly survived. "It was through his cheek and then went through his shoulder and went out the other side of his back," Beasley told KOCO-TV of Oklahoma City on August 14, 2008. (See "Choctaw Cat Shot with Arrow, Survives.") "Who could do something like that?"

As far as it is known, she never got an answer to that question because the culprit never was apprehended.

Jared Wade Barlass

About a week before Deuce was attacked, nineteen-year-old miscreants Jared Wade Barlass and Traton Tyler Vanderpool of Broken Arrow in Rogers County to the north of Choctaw used compound bows in order to kill five cows in Oologah that were valued at $19,000.

They have been charged with nine counts of animal cruelty but are out on bail awaiting trial. "They were bored, they jumped out of their truck with their compound bows...they were just kind of shooting off," Jerry Smittle of the Rogers County Sheriff's Office told the Broken Arrow Ledger on August 18th. (See "Two Broken Arrow Teens Confess to Killing Rogers County Cattle.") "There was just a herd of them together so they were just puncturing them."

While the arrests of Barlass and Vanderpool are a welcome development, it is the very pinnacle of hypocrisy for societies to allow ranchers and slaughterhouses to abuse and kill defenseless cows with impunity. The same rationale is equally applicable to individuals who consume the flesh, leather, and other products of these horribly mistreated animals.

The Oklahoma County Sheriff's Department is treating the attack on Deuce as a possible act of animal cruelty and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is offering a frivolous reward of $2,500 for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrators. If it were even halfway serious, it would increase its reward money to at least $100,000 and, much more importantly, dispatch a team of investigators to Choctaw.

By simply grandstanding and running off at the mouth the HSUS is ensuring not only that the culprits never will be apprehended but that it will not be forced to part with any of its precious shekels. The organization is in fact so tightfisted that several uncorroborated reports on the web allege that it spends less than one per cent of its annual operating budget of $125 million rescuing, feeding, sheltering, and medicating animals.

That is in addition to its various betrayals of cats to their sworn enemies. (See Cat Defender posts of April 18, 2009 and November 20, 2009 entitled, respectively, "Quislings at the Humane Society Sell Out San Nicolas's Cats to the Assassins at the Diabolical United States Fish and Wildlife Service" and "Memo to the Humane Society: Tell the World Exactly How Many Cats You and Your Honeys at the USFWS Have Murdered on San Nicolas Island.")

Others lean toward the theory that Deuce was victimized by a farmer, most likely a reckless combine operator. There certainly can be no denying that combine operators take a heavy toll on cats and other animals.

Traton Tyler Vanderpool

For example, in July of 2009 a black and white kitten named Howard lost his front paws to a combine operator in Alaiedon Township, Michigan. For a week he lay in a ditch bleeding with his maggot-infested flesh rotting away until he was rescued by ten-year-old Kyle Billingslea and his eight-year-old brother, Bryce. (See Cat Defender posts of August 20, 2009 and November 24, 2009 entitled, respectively, "Combine Operator Severs Howard's Front Paws and Leaves Him in a Ditch to Die but He Is Saved at the Last Minute by a Pair of Compassionate Lads" and "Howard the Combine Kitty Is Adopted by the Lads Who Saved Him from a Sure and Certain Death in a Ditch Alongside a Michigan Wheat Field.")

Along about that same time a black cat named Oscar from the parish of Grouville in the Bailiwick of Jersey lost his back paws when he, too, was run over and left for dead by a combine operator. (See Cat Defender post of November 20, 2010 entitled "Celebrated as the World's First Bionic Cat, Oscar Now Has Been Turned into a Guinea Pig with a Very Uncertain Future.")

No arrests have been made in either case and crimes that are committed against animals by farmers are not even investigated. They are merely accepted as being part and parcel of the price for feeding the hoi polloi in spite of the catastrophic damage that factory farming is doing to both the animals and Mother Earth.

"The debate over climate change completely distorts our perspective," Josef Reichholf of the München State Zoo told Der Spiegel on November 23, 2007. (See "Biologists Debate Relocating Imperiled Species.") "Industrial-scale farming is the number one killer of species."

Considering that the attack on Deuce took place so long ago, his injuries already had healed to a certain extent by the time that he had arrived at Quail Creek and that is going to make it difficult, if not impossible, for the authorities to ascertain exactly what happened to him. Nonetheless, the Oklahoma County Sheriff's Office and COHS should treat this case as an act of animal cruelty and interview both local farmers as well as residents of the trailer park.

As the Washington Humane Society conclusively demonstrated during its investigation of cat poisoner Nico Dauphiné of the Smithsonian Institution, there is no substitute for good old-fashioned detective work when it comes to solving cases of animal cruelty. (See Cat Defender post of July 12, 2011 entitled "The Arrest of Nico Dauphiné for Attempting to Poison a Colony of Homeless Cats Unmasks the National Zoo as a Hideout for Ailurophobes and Criminals.")

Since an arrest is highly unlikely, Ruby is contenting herself with the unique opportunity afforded her to spend some quality time with Deuce. "I think it definitely pulls at your heartstrings," she told KFOR-TV of Oklahoma City on August 18th. (See "Reward for Info on Who Cut Off Cat's Legs.") "I'm proud of him, I'm very proud of him. I think he's a major survivor."

With so many enemies and living in such an antagonistic world, cats do not have any choice other than to be resilient. As the Chinese are fond of saying, they must "be like bamboo, bend but never break."

Photos: KFOR-TV (Deuce and Topper) and Broken Arrow Ledger (Barlass and Vanderpool).

Piran Is the Toast of All of Cornwall after Leading Rescuers to His Elderly Owner Who Had Fallen Down a Seventy-Foot Ravine Alongside a Cornfield

Piran Knew What Had Occurred Before Anyone Else Had So Much as a Clue

"The cat is very attached to her, and he was going back and forth in the gateway and meowing, so I decided to go and search the maize field."

-- Tamara Longmuir

Wadebridge is a sleepy little village in northern Cornwall with around seventy-five-hundred residents. Nothing much ever happens there and that is the way that the locals like it.

Nevertheless, early on Saturday, August 14th they did receive a little bit of unexpected excitement for a change. It was well worth the bother, however, because once the titillation had subsided it had a brand new hero in order to celebrate in the form of Piran, a black tomcat.

The commotion all began when thirty-eight-year-old farmer Tamara Longmuir was informed that an eighty-three-year-old neighbor of hers had mysteriously disappeared. This clearly was  matter for Dame Agatha to have investigated but since she, unfortunately, has been pushing up daisies ever since 1976, Longmuir had no alternative but to immediately drop what she was doing and organize an impromptu search for her.

"I went off in my truck to search our farm and fields but there was no sign of her," she later informed Sky News of London on August 16th. (See "Cornwall: First Pictures of Hero Cat Whose Meowing Helped Save Owner, Eighty-Three, Who Fell Seventy Feet Through Barbed Wire.")

Getting more and more frustrated as time wore on, she was pretty much at her wit's end until she spotted Piran sitting on top of a gate that led to her maize field. He also was clearly agitated about something or another.

"This is unusual," she related to Sky News. "The cat is very attached to her, and he was going back and forth in the gateway and meowing, so I decided to go and search the maize field."

As she soon found out, that proved to be far easier said than done. For starters, the maize was seven feet high. Secondly the only access to the field consisted of a small track around the perimeter.

She thus was forced to abandon her truck and to proceed à pied while all the time calling out the woman's name. That stratagem ultimately did prove to be successful but not exactly in the manner that she had intended.

The Ravine Was Easily Overlooked

"My cows could hear me calling and were mooing back," she confided to Sky News with, no doubt, a bemused grin. "I was hoping they would go quiet so I could hear."

That seemingly fruitless exercise did not go for naught, however, in that now she and everyone else in Wadebridge knows that it is far easier to locate a cow than a missing pensioner. The only tricky part is to be able to tell the difference between a cow mooing, a cat meowing, and a woman crying out for help.

Luckily for Longmuir, she ultimately was spared the daunting ordeal of wading through the stalks which not only attract all sorts of pesky insects but also can cut uncovered skin and cause it to itch like the bloody devil. "Just as I was going to go off and start going through the crop, I heard a very faint response to my calling," she continued to Sky News. "I then quickly realized my neighbor was down the seventy-foot ravine."

It might be more accurate to say that she had fallen through what au premier coup d'oeil looks more like an aperture in the earth shrouded in foliage than a ravine. By the time that Longmuir had reached her, she was not only lying in a stream but also had barreled through a barbed wire fence on her way down the steep embankment. 

It is impossible to determine from the photographs whether the fence was located at the top or the bottom of the ravine. It likewise is not known how long that she lay in the stream but speculation is that she could have been marooned there for hours. She was, quite obviously, conscious and, according to Longmuir, had come through her tumble unscathed.

Her rescuer was not nearly so lucky herself. "I came off worse than she did," Longmuir declared to Sky News.

That just goes to show that those old dowagers are a lot tougher than the young lasses of today. Even so, the woman not only was unable to climb out of the hole but apparently even to move.

Since neither she nor her rescuers have publicly commented on what happened, it is not known either what she was doing in the cornfield in the first place or how that she wound up at the bottom of the ravine. The most likely explanation is that she simply did not see the hole until after it was way too late and she was on her way down to the bottom.

There is, however, one other possible explanation. Although maize is nowadays grown primarily for food, animal feed, ethanol, syrup, and starch, it historically has had another more celebrated purpose and that is to make corn liquor.

A Stretcher Was Lowered Down for the Woman

It therefore is entirely possible that someone in the area has a working still in back of the cornfield. After all, moonshining still goes on in England just as it does in the United States. (See the BBC, April 9, 2015, "Plymouth Man Overcome by Home 'Moonshine'.")

The woman accordingly could have been out and about bright and early with the chickens in order to have gotten herself an eyeopener. As it so often happens in such cases, one pull on the jug just naturally leads to another and before she knew it she had staggered down a ravine.

That is, admittedly, a bit far-fetched but even so not totally out of the question, especially given that Cornwall is one of the so-called six Irish nations and Celts and corn go together like peanut butter and jelly. Besides, it would make for a much better story if it were true.

For instance, one can readily imagine the field day that the tabloids would have had with such a story. One headline might have read: "An Old Girl, Returning Home from Her Still, Staggers Down a Hole but Is Saved by Her Always Sober Cat."

Given the woman incapacitation, that necessitated the summoning of the Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service and its water rescue team, the Bodmin branch of the Cornwall and Devon Police, and an evacuation helicopter from the South Western Ambulance Service Foundation Trust. All totaled, twenty-five rescuers and twelve vehicles were dispatched to the scene.

Although the authorities certainly had more than sufficient manpower, equipment, and expertise, it still took them another two hours in order to get the woman out of the steep ravine. Finally, she "was hoisted back up to the field on a stretcher via line rescue," the Bodmin Force proudly announced August 14th on Facebook. "She was then taken to the hospital via Air Ambulance (a helicopter) in stable condition."

Whereas the woman had been trapped in an area where access was difficult, her rescue proved not to have been anything that the experienced emergency personnel who serve Cornwall could not handle. "Cornwall is a fairly rural county, so it is not unusual for us to get called to individuals who may need assistance and access is tricky," Eleanor Richards of the Bodmin Force explained to Newsweek on August 16th. (See "Cat's 'Persistent' Cries Save Eighty-Three-Year-Old Owner Who Fell Down Ravine.") "There is a lot of moorland and coastline to contend with so we work closely with our partner agencies and volunteer (organizations) to achieve the best result possible."

This particular rescue was novel, however. "I can't say that we've ever had assistance from a feline though..." she added. "That's a first!"

Her fellow officers were a good deal more forthcoming. "Piran the cat saved the day!" they wrote on Facebook.

She Was Brought Out Via Line Rescue...

It was Longmuir, however, who most accurately characterized Piran's invaluable contribution to the rescue. "Without the cat waiting at the gate to that field, it could have been hours later that I or anyone else would have checked in there," she told Sky News.

That certainly is true enough in that absolutely nobody in his right mind would ever want to search a maize field. In particular, it would have been necessary for emergency personnel to have gone through it row by row and that would have taken them until long after Longmuir's cows had returned home for the night. Otherwise, they would have been forced to have waited until after the maize had been harvested and that was hardly a viable option under the circumstances.

The hero cats and their derring-do that have been immortalized in the novels of Lilian Jackson Braun, Rita Mae Brown, and others may be fictional but Piran and a million others like him definitely do exist. They do not receive anywhere near the amount of ink and accolades that dogs do but that certainly does not mean that they are any less heroic and devoted to their owners and others.

For example, at 5 a.m. on  April 13, 2006 a black cat named Möhre alerted his owner, Dirk Prager, to the presence of an hours-old baby boy that had been abandoned on their doorstep at 13 am Emberg Straße in Köln. Given that the temperature outside was only 32° Fahrenheit, he might not have survived if it had not been for Möhre's heroics.

"The cat is a hero," Uwe Beier of the Köln Polizei declared. "Its loud meowing got the attention of the homeowner and saved the baby from suffering life-threatening hypothermia." (See Cat Defender post of April 21, 2006 entitled "Möhre Saves a Newborn Infant Who Had Been Abandoned in the Cold on a Doorstep in Köln.")

In late September of 2016, a two-year-old, blue-eyed, black, brown, and white part-Siamese rescue cat named Ivy from  tiny Tehkummah on Manitoulin Island, located on the Canadian side of Lake Huron, saved the arm of the town's sixty-nine-year-old reeve, Eric Russell, after he had gotten it entangled in a garage door that had malfunctioned. Although she lived across the street, Ivy nevertheless heard his frantic cries for help and alerted her owner who in turn summoned help.

Attending physicians afterwards informed him that if he had spent as little as an additional fifteen minutes with his arm entangled in the door that they surely would have been forced to amputate it. (See Cat Defender post of November 29, 2016 entitled "When Everyone Else Was Deaf to His Plaintive Cries for Help, Ivy Came to the Rescue of a Reeve Who Had His Arm Entangled in a Garage Door.")

Cats likewise are legendary to alerting their owners to conflagrations. (See Cat Defender posts of October 31, 2007 and November 30, 2007 entitled, respectively, "Bacon Shows His Appreciation and Love for His Rescuer by Awakening Her from a Burning Apartment" and "Cuddles Saves a Saskatchewan Family from a Blaze in a Faulty Fireplace That Destroys Their Home.")

... and Then Taken to the Hospital in a Helicopter

Deplorably, some selfish and uncaring owners do not even have the common decency to reciprocate. (See Cat Defender post of April 3, 2010 entitled "Lumpi Is Unforgivably Left to Die in a Burning Apartment by the Ingrates Whose Lives He Saved.")

They additionally have alerted owners to gas leaks in their homes. (See Cat Defender posts of April 23, 2007 and November 12, 2007 entitled, respectively, "Winnie Saves an Indiana Family of Three from Dying of Carbon Monoxide Poisoning" and "Winnie Is Honored as the ASPCA's Cat of the Year for Saving Her Family from Carbon Monoxide Poisoning.") 

No one is quite sure exactly how that they do it, but cats are renowned all over the world for their uncanny ability to detect cancer. (See Cat Defender posts of April 11, 2009, March 27, 2010, and April 20, 2012 entitled, respectively, "Tiger Saves His Owner's Life by Alerting Him to a Cancerous Growth on His Left Lung," "Taken In Off the Street by a Compassionate Woman, Sumo Returns the Favor by Alerting Her to a Cancerous Growth on Her Bosom," and "Grateful for Being Provided with a Loving Home, Fidge in Turn Saves His Mistress's Life by Alerting Her to a Malignant Growth on Her Breast.")

Cats also are able to anticipate diabetic seizures. (See Cat Defender posts of May 18, 2009 and April 21, 2012 entitled, respectively, "Elijah Teaches Himself How to Detect Low Blood Sugar Levels in His Guardians and Others" and "Adopted from a Shelter Only Hours Previously, Pudding Saves His Rescuer's Life by Awakening Her from a Diabetic Seizure.") 

Last but not least, some cats are capable of anticipating emphysema attacks. (See Cat Defender post of April 18, 2009 entitled "Blackie Stays Up Nights Monitoring His Guardian's Breathing for Emphysema Attacks.")

The salient point to be gleaned from all of those examples is that it would be unwise for individuals to place all of their trust in their fellow man, government, religion, modern medicine, and trendy technologies, such as cellphones and smoke alarms. A loyal and dependable cat is a far better option.

In fact, there are at least twenty perfectly good reasons as to why that keeping a cat is far preferable to having a woman. Moreover, if there should be any truth in that assertion, there surely must be at least twice that many valid reasons for women to prefer cats over men. (See Cat Defender post of February 17, 2018 entitled "Forget about Women! Adopting a Cat Is a Far More Rewarding Alternative for Some Guys Who Are Seeking Their Forever Valentines.")

In spite of all the wonderful things that they do as well as the faithful companionship and the boundless joy that they bring to so many people, cats are under sustained attack from seemingly ever quarter of the globe. Most notably, loudmouthed ornithologists, wildlife biologists, PETA, shelters, Animal Control officers, cops, and The New York Times all want them dead and gone.

Piran Is a Real Life, as Opposed to a Fictional, Hero 

The biggest threat that they are facing is coming however from those self-important, puffed-up egomaniacal monsters who rule the roosts in the degree mills and governmental laboratories and who are working day and night in order to eradicate the species through genetic manipulation. "Working with a primate is on the expensive side, but a cat's affordability and docile nature make them (sic) one of the most feasible animals to work with to understand the human genome," Leslie Lyons, a vile, scum-of-the-earth vivisector at the University of Missouri at Columbia, candidly admitted to U.S. News and World Report on July 29th. (See "Cats Might Be Purrfect Model for Human Genetics Research.") 

First of all, Lyons and her misbegotten ilk are, by her own admission, cheap and opportunistic predators of the worst sort. Secondly, they are welfare bums whose diabolical crimes are being financed by the tax dollars of the masses.

Predictably, Lyons' utterly indefensible proposal was roundly applauded and wholeheartedly endorsed by the totally unscrupulous, cat-hating capitalistic media. (See the Smithsonian Magazine, July 30, 2021, "Human Genomes Are Surprisingly Cat-Like," The Atlantic, July 28, 2021, "One More Thing We Have in Common with Cats," The New York Times, July 28, 2021, "The Unappreciated Importance of Cats to Medical Research" and, earlier, Yale Environment 360, February 9, 2021, "Assisting Evolution: How Far Should We Go to Help Species Adapt?") 

No additional information has appeared online regarding the pensioner so it is not known how that she is coming along although it is presumed that her stay in the hospital was a brief one. As for Piran, he was last seen on the day of the rescue standing all alone in a field. Supposedly he was being fed and cared for by the same woman who attends to his mistress.

Hopefully, Piran and his owner are back together again in their happy home. Given that cats are celebrated for their ability to treat the vicissitudes of life with equanimity, it is unlikely that he has allowed his newfound notoriety to have gone to his handsome head.

His fans therefore should not expect to see him turn up on either the rubber chicken circuit, the télé, or in motion pictures. Rather, he surely is content with having his guardian back home with him.

Besides, now that all the noisy firemen, policemen, and various rescue personnel have gone away, Wadebridge surely must have returned to its normally sedate nature. Living in Cornwall does have its distinct advantages.

For instance, before he was borne away on December 20th by the Grim Reaper, famed novelist John Le Carré resided in Saint Buryan, eighty-five kilometers south of Wadebridge and near Land's End. Although he certainly had more than enough moola to have lived anywhere in the world that he pleased, he instead chose Cornwall because it was, in his own words, as far away from London as a person could get and yet still be in England.

Photos: Tamara Longmuir (Piran) and the Bodmin Force (the ravine, stretcher, line rescue, and the helicopter).