Several weeks ago, while driving back to Honolulu after nighttime practice at Wahiawa Kendo Club, Hayashi and I saw the car in front of us stop in the middle of the road. The driver got out and picked a cat off the road that had been hit by a car (I don't know if it was him or someone else that did it) and then carried it off to the side of the road, leaving it next to a tree. As the driver was returning to his car I asked him if the cat was dead - he said, "No, but it's pretty bad; it's going to die." He drove away.
We like cats so I went to go check on the cat. It was a kitten and although obviously injured (bleeding from somewhere) and very disoriented (kind of slowly crawling around in a circle), I couldn't tell if it was going to die just by looking at it. I put it in the car and we took it to an animal hospital.
The hospital report was that he had been hit in the head, lost some teeth, and his right eye didn't seem to be working properly. Beyond that the doctor couldn't tell if he had received any life-threatening internal injuries - she said if he lived for another 24-48 hours that he had a pretty decent chance of surviving.
The kitten on the second day of his hospital stay - cleaned up and also a little drugged up with pain killers.
Two months later the kitten is still alive and is getting stronger and larger every day. I think he lost some vision in his right eye but besides that he seems healthy and happy.
His name is T.C., which is short for "Theoretical Cat." Does anybody want to give him a good home? (I already have 5 cats.)
Anyway, I'm posting these cat photos on this kendo website because 1) I think he's cute and I enjoy looking at him; and 2) it seems to me that if Sato sensei didn't hold kendo practices on Wednesday nights, Theoretical would have probably died on the side of the road that night.
Yet another unanticipated example of how good kendo is.
Posted by Shishido.