Less about the new animal shelter, more about my vacuum cleaner

It makes good sense to plug my story on the new Memphis Animal Shelter by going into detail about my kitten's litany of ailments, right?

He was a rescue kitten, after all, though not from the shelter but from an NPO in Midtown.

I dreamed of Seessel Snickerbottoms months before I got him. I knew he would be fluffy with white fur and splotches. He would love me endlessly and ask nothing in return. I searched online, hit up strangers on Twitter and visited pet shops. I was nearly at my wit's end when Seessel (I'm not going to tell you his original name) was revealed to me from the back room of a cattery where the owner was hoarding him. He was perfect.

About a week into things, his left eye got goopy with chlamydia, and I first learned the joys of squirting medicinal syringes down this petulant animal's throat.

 A couple weeks after he'd recovered from castration, I found a flea on him and administered some cheap medicine to the back of the neck. That one flea cost me $175 after vet's fees to rid him of the apparent toxins I unwittingly bathed him in.

That was way stressful, but nothing like last week, when he threw up all over the apartment and finally hocked up a tangled web of hair bands. He was in a bad place, and once the vet took an x-ray, I approved her recommendation for immediate surgery. My foot-long kitten had gobbled about 20 hair ties. Some he didn't bother to chew.

                                            He had surgery Tuesday, and it was intense.

While I was driving home yesterday from the shelter, worried about how I should approach my story about the gleaming new facility given Tuesday's news of a bruising audit that accused employees of ties to dogfighting and disregard for policy, I got a call from the clinic that Seessel was ready to come home. I rushed to make the deadline for both my story and the clinic's hours.

Now, it's almost time for me to give him his third dose of medicine today. But for the record, I still think adopting him was *without a doubt* worth it.