What Wins People's Hearts (the Marketability of Suffering)

Like many, my heart is easily swayed by the creature that has known suffering. I noticed this little guy at Oakland Animal Services- the shelter where I volunteer. I kept thinking about him and since we as volunteers are the "eyes" of a perpetually small staff that can't watch and observe the hundreds of animals we have at the facility at any one time, I wrote in about him.

His right eye had healed as a permanent protrusion from his head- masquerading as a tumor. They operated on the poor thing and when I went to visit him- I found an entirely different cat- healing, doing well and purring vehemently. Perhaps somewhere from the ether of this post, someone will want to give him a loving home. Despite his past, he has hope. That's what drew me to him- his willingness despite everything to come to try to relate to me, even in pain (I suspect) at the front of the cage before this operation was done. He had the hope to reach out- and it gives me hope that he will attract a new loving owner once he heals up.