As promised, here are some photos of Vazra.  What you’ll notice throughout is the condition of his fur: terrible.  While I can honestly say he looks better now than he did just a week or so ago, the knots are still there, not all of which are obvious, and what they’ve done to him is horrific.  There are places where a knot has rolled back through his coat and ripped out all the hair in the process, essentially leaving a racing stripe of bare skin in its wake.  Those spots are now starting to grow back in, but the knots remain intact — and I mean several of them spread over his entire body, as well as what I can’t see on his tummy and under his legs.  This is why it’s imperative for me to get him to the vet for grooming.  Knots like this are extremely painful.  Imagine having your hair pulled 24 hours per day every day as it slowly rips itself out of your head; imagine those knots tracking across your body as they slowly entangle every bit of hair around them; imagine anything that touches those knots causes the pain to increase manyfold; imagine losing your protection from the elements as your hair rips itself out of your body in more than half-a-dozen places simultaneously.  That is Vazra’s current existence.

The first one is of him sitting on the fence after enjoying some dinner and a whole lotta lovin’.  If you click on the photo, you’ll see a high resolution version that makes it easier to see one of the large knots in his fur.  It’s on his right side just in front of his tail (in this picture, that would be just above his tail).  That’s the knot that literally stripped all of the fur off of his right side.  That’s why it looks so ragged and disheveled; the fur is just beginning to grow back in, but the bald spot (literally his entire side) is still quite visible.

There’s always time for a bit of something to eat, right?

Here’s another one of him eating that was taken from the other side.  Again, click on it for a hi-res version that better shows the enormous knot and stripped fur on that side of his body.  What you see is the knot there at his ass end and the nearly exposed skin along his entire side.  The knot apparently started just behind his neck and has worked its way to the opposite end of his body by ripping out all the hair along the way.  Major ouch.

Here’s one that shows one of the knots on his neck (the black ball in the center of the picture).  Again, click on it for a closer look.

And one more of him sitting on the fence.  A mockingbird saw him and flew into the tree to taunt Vazra and, should an opportunity present itself, attack him as well.  That’s why Vazra’s looking up into the tree, a position he held for some time after this photo was taken while he and the bird decided just how far they wanted to take this.  Eventually, even though the bird continued mocking him from the tree, my new feline friend lost interest, jumped down, and went on about his business.  The mockingbird chased him as you’d expect; Vazra just ignored it and continued on his way.