Our story left off with the kitten being brought into the house after 5.5 weeks of wild cat life...
The first night she stayed in the high walled box lined with a soft fleece blanket (courtesy of the sale shelf at my local Rite Aid). I kept as quiet as possible as I prepared for bed. Her green eyes were locked onto me, the strange two legged one, who had brought her in from the white shed nightmare. As she watched me, I hurriedly sent out a number of emails to my colleagues to say that I would not be going to work the next day due to my unexpected pleasantry. The cat needed real kitten formula, not the canned mushy stuff that the Rite Aid had handy. I bought the kitten a fish shaped bowl for her food and water, figuring that it would be cute for a kitten named Tuna to eat out of a fish shaped bowl. Into said bowl went a serving, a large serving, of said cheap can food. It would be a drastic understatement to say that she scarfed it down. As I watched her eat I couldn't help to think of werewolves pouncing on a feast. It broke my heart to think that this was the first cat food she was eating and possibly her first real ''meal'' in over two weeks. My neighbor had done her very best to feed Tuna, but eating straight from a can of human food that had been thrown down from two flights up was a little different from eating actual cat food in a bowl. I would later realize just how much of a difference real food would make to Tuna.
The kitten settled beside her fish bowl after her hearty meal and a good long drink of water, so I did the same by settling into my own bed. Throughout the night I would check on her - I knew that the food I had given to her was too rich for her young kitten belly and that I was likely to see it again. While it was nice to not have the sound of a starving, lonely kitten meowing among the serenade of a Queen's neighborhood, I was worried sick; if anything happened to this kitten, good or bad, it was now entirely in my hands.
The next morning it was my mission to find a pet shop and to get my kitten proper food. As I frantically ran around the neighborhood I came to realize from all the gates still locked over doors that nothing opened until 10am...it was 8am. Two hours, a cup of coffee, a phone call to my sister, and a three mile walk later, I was the first customer in the local pet-shop. Armed with several bottles of kitten formula, a litter box, and the strongest smell-deodorizing litter in the market, I went home to kitten-proof and kitten-ify my room.
The first day she spent in the box. When I returned home from my half day of work, she was in the process of relieving herself. While in the process of cleaning up her mess, she bark-hissed at me, which nearly resulted with me making a bigger mess by almost dropping her waste all over the rug from start. If you've never heard a cat bark-hiss, it's a no joke threat that should probably be taken seriously. I stayed calm and spoke to her sweetly so that she would grow used to the sound of my voice in the hope that I'd never have to hear a bark hiss again.
That night, Tuna watched me as I set up a corner in the room for her. Being that countries need a transitional period between regime changes, it made rational sense that a kitten would need a transitional phase as well. The kitten corner was no five star luxury resort, but it did provide a place for Tuna to stretch her legs and to have some curiosity stimulating distractions. An extra added bonus that the corner provided for me was that I could feed her with less of a chance of losing a finger.
All was going smoothly. Tuna was really liking her new freedom in the corner and she lapped up the kitten formula like a pro. She was beginning to play and clean herself - all very good signs of her settling in. I was headed to the door to make dinner for myself when all hell broke loose.
Tuna started to vomit violently. It wasn't food that she was regurgitating; it was sticks. Her body was rejecting the odds and ends that she had been eating in the shed to survive. The poor dear started to meow from fright as she vomited, so I jumped into action. In a move that was probably the most maternal thing that I've yet done, I plucked Tuna from the floor by her scruff, tucked her close to me, and sat with her in the corner for two hours. Young cats are comforted by warmth, being held close, and hearing/feeling heartbeats. I had not yet so much as touched Tuna, and there we were for a good portion of the evening with her in my arms. I thought that she was going to die. It was horrible, but she made it through. By the end of those two hours she was purring and standing on my shoulder (her favorite spot to this day), playing with my earrings.
Her playful, mischievous character began to show that night. The following morning, I nearly had a heart-attack because I could not find her. But when I called her name, her little pink nose and calico face popped out of one of my drawers. In the night, she had liberated herself from the kitten corner, thus signaling to me that her transition into my room and into my life was complete in her eyes. The third night, she slept on my throat and continued to pop out of or to chew on things that made me laugh or made me nervous for fear of her getting hurt. She had done something out of spite to me one morning, which made me say, "You're such a Todd!" (I did not yet know if she was a boy or a girl -I assumed that she was the former). The Todd reference is from Disney's The Fox and the Hound. In her younger days, Tuna looked very fox like and acted very much like the protagonist of the movie, Todd the Fox. It made sense and it stuck.
For the following Sunday, I made a date with the vet for Tuna Todd to get checked out to see if she was healthy or if I needed to step up the game with providing her with more nutrition. Tuna Todd is an absolutely gorgeous (then I would have said hansom) cat, so the night before we went to the vet's I said to "him," "If you were a girl, I'd call you Bella," as inspired by the Italians with whom I worked over the summer.
Much to my delight, after registering Tuna Todd at the vet's on pages worth of paper work as Tuna Todd, the first thing that the vet said when she saw my child was, "What a lovely girl!" As it turns out, 99.9% if not 100% of calicoes are female. I laughed to think of the name that my kitten now had; "Bella Tuna Todd." Somehow, it worked. I mostly call her Bella, but when she does naughty things, (such as getting her face stuck in my water cup and then throwing it off, only for the water to land on a live power strip), I'll call her Bella Tuna Todd.
There is no doubt about it - she is my child and I love her dearly. We travel around the city now and then, so if you see a gal on the train with a calico, it is likely to be me. People who see my kitten on the trains smile and ask me about her - they are always struck by how calm she is on the train. She doesn't meow. I like to joke that she used-up all of her meowing allowance in the first weeks of her life. Bella Tuna does have a gift of making people very calm and happy when they see her. When people oo and awe at her, I very proudly think, "That's my girl!" Even if she does bring a bit of mischief, life would be very boring with out my meowing pal.
Your humble writer,
S. Faxon
The first night she stayed in the high walled box lined with a soft fleece blanket (courtesy of the sale shelf at my local Rite Aid). I kept as quiet as possible as I prepared for bed. Her green eyes were locked onto me, the strange two legged one, who had brought her in from the white shed nightmare. As she watched me, I hurriedly sent out a number of emails to my colleagues to say that I would not be going to work the next day due to my unexpected pleasantry. The cat needed real kitten formula, not the canned mushy stuff that the Rite Aid had handy. I bought the kitten a fish shaped bowl for her food and water, figuring that it would be cute for a kitten named Tuna to eat out of a fish shaped bowl. Into said bowl went a serving, a large serving, of said cheap can food. It would be a drastic understatement to say that she scarfed it down. As I watched her eat I couldn't help to think of werewolves pouncing on a feast. It broke my heart to think that this was the first cat food she was eating and possibly her first real ''meal'' in over two weeks. My neighbor had done her very best to feed Tuna, but eating straight from a can of human food that had been thrown down from two flights up was a little different from eating actual cat food in a bowl. I would later realize just how much of a difference real food would make to Tuna.
The kitten settled beside her fish bowl after her hearty meal and a good long drink of water, so I did the same by settling into my own bed. Throughout the night I would check on her - I knew that the food I had given to her was too rich for her young kitten belly and that I was likely to see it again. While it was nice to not have the sound of a starving, lonely kitten meowing among the serenade of a Queen's neighborhood, I was worried sick; if anything happened to this kitten, good or bad, it was now entirely in my hands.
The next morning it was my mission to find a pet shop and to get my kitten proper food. As I frantically ran around the neighborhood I came to realize from all the gates still locked over doors that nothing opened until 10am...it was 8am. Two hours, a cup of coffee, a phone call to my sister, and a three mile walk later, I was the first customer in the local pet-shop. Armed with several bottles of kitten formula, a litter box, and the strongest smell-deodorizing litter in the market, I went home to kitten-proof and kitten-ify my room.
The first day she spent in the box. When I returned home from my half day of work, she was in the process of relieving herself. While in the process of cleaning up her mess, she bark-hissed at me, which nearly resulted with me making a bigger mess by almost dropping her waste all over the rug from start. If you've never heard a cat bark-hiss, it's a no joke threat that should probably be taken seriously. I stayed calm and spoke to her sweetly so that she would grow used to the sound of my voice in the hope that I'd never have to hear a bark hiss again.
That night, Tuna watched me as I set up a corner in the room for her. Being that countries need a transitional period between regime changes, it made rational sense that a kitten would need a transitional phase as well. The kitten corner was no five star luxury resort, but it did provide a place for Tuna to stretch her legs and to have some curiosity stimulating distractions. An extra added bonus that the corner provided for me was that I could feed her with less of a chance of losing a finger.
All was going smoothly. Tuna was really liking her new freedom in the corner and she lapped up the kitten formula like a pro. She was beginning to play and clean herself - all very good signs of her settling in. I was headed to the door to make dinner for myself when all hell broke loose.
Tuna started to vomit violently. It wasn't food that she was regurgitating; it was sticks. Her body was rejecting the odds and ends that she had been eating in the shed to survive. The poor dear started to meow from fright as she vomited, so I jumped into action. In a move that was probably the most maternal thing that I've yet done, I plucked Tuna from the floor by her scruff, tucked her close to me, and sat with her in the corner for two hours. Young cats are comforted by warmth, being held close, and hearing/feeling heartbeats. I had not yet so much as touched Tuna, and there we were for a good portion of the evening with her in my arms. I thought that she was going to die. It was horrible, but she made it through. By the end of those two hours she was purring and standing on my shoulder (her favorite spot to this day), playing with my earrings.
Her playful, mischievous character began to show that night. The following morning, I nearly had a heart-attack because I could not find her. But when I called her name, her little pink nose and calico face popped out of one of my drawers. In the night, she had liberated herself from the kitten corner, thus signaling to me that her transition into my room and into my life was complete in her eyes. The third night, she slept on my throat and continued to pop out of or to chew on things that made me laugh or made me nervous for fear of her getting hurt. She had done something out of spite to me one morning, which made me say, "You're such a Todd!" (I did not yet know if she was a boy or a girl -I assumed that she was the former). The Todd reference is from Disney's The Fox and the Hound. In her younger days, Tuna looked very fox like and acted very much like the protagonist of the movie, Todd the Fox. It made sense and it stuck.
For the following Sunday, I made a date with the vet for Tuna Todd to get checked out to see if she was healthy or if I needed to step up the game with providing her with more nutrition. Tuna Todd is an absolutely gorgeous (then I would have said hansom) cat, so the night before we went to the vet's I said to "him," "If you were a girl, I'd call you Bella," as inspired by the Italians with whom I worked over the summer.
Much to my delight, after registering Tuna Todd at the vet's on pages worth of paper work as Tuna Todd, the first thing that the vet said when she saw my child was, "What a lovely girl!" As it turns out, 99.9% if not 100% of calicoes are female. I laughed to think of the name that my kitten now had; "Bella Tuna Todd." Somehow, it worked. I mostly call her Bella, but when she does naughty things, (such as getting her face stuck in my water cup and then throwing it off, only for the water to land on a live power strip), I'll call her Bella Tuna Todd.
There is no doubt about it - she is my child and I love her dearly. We travel around the city now and then, so if you see a gal on the train with a calico, it is likely to be me. People who see my kitten on the trains smile and ask me about her - they are always struck by how calm she is on the train. She doesn't meow. I like to joke that she used-up all of her meowing allowance in the first weeks of her life. Bella Tuna does have a gift of making people very calm and happy when they see her. When people oo and awe at her, I very proudly think, "That's my girl!" Even if she does bring a bit of mischief, life would be very boring with out my meowing pal.
S. Faxon
