Tiger Wesa, Everybody’s Friend

The year was late 2009 and he couldn’t have been more than a week old when I first met him. He had been abandoned by his dam when the generator testing crew disturbed her kitten den. I didn’t know where she had gone and it was too late to transplant the wee kitten back to his dam, for too many human hands had handled the kitten. One texted photograph to my wife and the kitten was riding home in a box.

I had done this before, but never with one so young. Our vet was not so positive that he would survive. He was so young that he would need body heat to stay warm and we weren’t…