When we got back from the market, she was waiting for us in the shade nearby. She scampered into our house as I unlocked the door and made a beeline for a place she had investigated earlier. A grocery bag on the dusty bottom shelf of our TV unit. She stayed in there until Alex came home for lunch. "I guess we have a cat now."
Oh wait, what's that rustling she's doing in there?
Hey!
Kittens!
Two little baby cats were born in our living room that afternoon, the smallest things you've ever seen!
At first, we didn't know if we'd keep them, knowing there was a risk for me of getting toxoplasmosis. I'm a cat person. I love all animals really, but our family always had cats around as I grew up, and I had been wanting a cat for this home at some point too. Now we had one for each family member! We took her to the vet for a checkup and to see if she had someone looking for her, but we also asked our neighbors if she belonged to any of them. We learned more about toxo and decided to keep them all.
I made a "nest" for them in a cardboard box and they stayed in our closet off the kitchen area. Luc could check on the kittens with us, but we made sure he couldn't get to them when we weren't supervising.
Luc followed the mama cat's every more for the first few weeks. I can see he's an animal lover too.
Then, unexpectedly, the mama cat went out one night and didn't come back. We took the 2 week old kittens to the vet the following morning and got down to feeding them with a bottle. We had some trouble. Our neighbors in the house in front of ours happily helped us in the task, and we thought it would be better if they kept the kittens at their home for routine feedings. It seemed our cat family was gone as quickly as they had appeared.
Later that night, the mama cat returned! We got the kittens back from the neighbors, and everything seemed to be back in order. The babies had just opened their eyes and had been moving around a bit more. They seemed to be thriving.
About a week later, the mama cat moved her kittens during the night to a different box inside the closet. We're not sure why. Maybe she felt insecure in the nest? Maybe she wanted a clean, new place? When I looked in the box in the morning, the black kitten wasn't moving. I think it suffocated, getting stuck down in a corner. Alex buried the kitten in our yard.
Two nights later, the mama cat left again. I cuddled with the white kitten and put her back in the box in case the mama cat came back after we had gone to sleep. She was alone all night.
I tried giving her a bottle in the morning, thinking she might be hungry, but she seemed sleepy and cold (which is strange because we live in a tropical place) so I cuddled her for a while and tried to give her the bottle again an hour later. I didn't think anything was really wrong until she started making these awful crying sounds. It sounded just like a human baby's cry. I knew it was too late to do anything at that point. I ran to the neighbor's house with her in my hands, but she had already stopped moving. I felt so bad for this poor little kitten. I kept wondering if I inadvertantly caused it's death.
Unbelievably, the mama cat showed up 24 hours after the whiet kitten died. We had begun to thought maybe she had eaten some poison and it had passed to her kitten while she went off to be alone to die. (I've heard of animals doing that, but I'm not sure if it's true).
She meowed incessantly at the closet for a couple of days. She searched and searched around our house. The vet told us she was probably in heat and that's why she left.
We took her in to get spayed.
She hasn't left us since.
Her name is Kitty.
She is a sweet, mellow cat, who wakes us up at 7:30 every morning.
She has also been very tolerant of occasional kicks from a jealous monkey.
But mostly, they are buddies.
No comments:
Post a Comment