As a teenager we had several cats. 63 to be exact, that lived on a very big piece of property we owned. But there was 1 that stood out from the rest. A huge gray cat named RothChild.
RothChild was VERY VERY mean. He would fight with our 6 dogs constantly, acquiring huge bites, scratches and scrapes. He was fearless ... even defying cars as they drove down the 4 lanes of Greenleaf Blvd. Oh yes, he was hit a few times ... never to die but instead, collected injuries and battle scars like a proud soldier.
Among the many and probably the worst were a missing a front leg, 1 empty eye socket, and an ear that literally hung off the side of his head and healed that way, just dangling there! lol.
It was when a car ran over his tail that I'd had enough of the strange looking "zombie cat". The tail had been severed flush, to his rear end and would start bleeding with every dog/cat fight he'd get into.
Then one day, I got an epiphany. (mind you, I was only 14 at the time) I figured, you couldn't hurt this cat, can't be done! So why not cauterize his wound? So while my mother was away shopping, stuffing him head first under my arm, I heated our cast iron bacon press on the stove and pressed it to the wound. OMG, I thought he was gonna kill me, and the area where I did it, was now singed bald resembling a baboons butt lol.
I ran after him where he escaped to the living room, trying to lick his wound and thought "oh no, now it'll get infected!" so I quickly looked around ... no bandages laying about at close hand of course, but on an end table was an RC cola bottle cap ... RC? RothChild? Hmmmm ... I grabbed the bottle cap and placed it over the wound and smacked his rear end as hard as I could. It stuck! Within 2 weeks, the wound healed around the bottle cap and it became a permanent prosthesis lol. Ahhhhh, but the story doesn't end there, lol .....
After a few more battles, my mother was losing her mind with worry over RC, not to mention he just looked plain scary! (worse than Church in Pet Cemetery after his resurrection, but close) She finally decided to have a neighbor take the cat; who now looked like Frankenstein with only 3 legs, a gaping black hole where one eye was missing, a dangling ear and a butt that looked like a baboons with an RC cola bottle cap in the center ... into L.A. and just drop it off.
I'm sure the fine people of L.A. had quite a laugh when they encountered RC ... ON HIS 3 WEEK TREK BACK TO OUR HOUSE! Yep. 3 weeks later that darn cat showed up one morning, sitting in front of the garage cleaning himself.
He later and finally met his fate from ingesting rat poison in a neighbors yard. But talk about 9 lives!
