I work in a convenience store a block from where I live, and less than a block from there is a trailer park where unaltered pets and feral cats have been breeding at will for as long as I’ve been around. Nobody gets their cats fixed at the trailer park, so they just continue to breed. And, somehow, because I have a number of cats, when the cats in the trailer park breed and the kittens allow themselves to be caught, they bring them to me. I reluctantly accept them, because what’s the alternative==take them back to the trailer park and let them go with no protection from larger animals—also allowed to run loose—the elements, and “whatever”?
It’s sometimes just one or two, but it has been, at least once, a basket full of kittens. Several babies and no mama. Fortunately, in the past, the kittens have been old enough to eat solid food, not needing mama’s milk for survival.
This one was different.
One day, a regular store customer from the trailer park told me that that kittens under his trailer had been meowing loudly for the last day or so. Of course, this triggered my anxieties. To know that some kittens needed help for their survival (as I saw the person who told me about the kittens was not likely to know what to do or how to do it), I decided right away that I should do what I could to care for the kittens.
“Where’s their mother?” I said.
“I don’t know. I think she abandoned them.”
“Now, what do I do?” I thought, feeling, as usual, responsible for doing something to help cats in danger instead of doing nothing about it. “If you can catch them, bring them in. I’ll help you figure out what to do with them,” I said, with a sinking heart, knowing of the heartbreak that often accompanies trying to feed abandoned kittens, and the onerous responsibility of feeding them on a regular basis (when, often, they won’t readily accept food), not to mention the heart-rending possibility that you might not get them to eat at all. Nevertheless, I said, “Bring me the kittens, and I will take care of the situation.”
For an hour or two, I heard nothing more, and I began to hope that, in some miraculous way, the problem of the abandoned kittens had been solved—and I had been “let off the hook.”
Then, my “friend,” Michael, came back in, telling me again about the mewing kittens. He said he’d been able to catch one. I said, fine, bring it in to me. He left, and in 15 minutes he was back. He pulled the mewing kitten out of his jacket.
“Do you know where the mother is?”
“Yeah, that’s her over there.” He pointed across the parking lot, where I saw an obviously agitated cat running back and forth.
“She’s upset because you have her kitten. Take the kitten and put it back under the trailer where she can find it.” As unthinking people often do, he had heard the kittens intermittently meowing and assumed the mother was gone, disturbed the nest, moved the kittens, and so completely upset the situation to the point that it would be virtually impossible to re-establish the previous status quo. Nevertheless, not really wanting the responsibility, and hoping that this might solve the problem, I told him to take the kitten back and put it back into the nest.
“Ok, I’ll try.” He left, with the kitten.
So, I was anxiously hoping that I’d hear later that the mother returned to the kittens. and the problem had been solved.
About an hour and a half before closing time for the store, another friend from the trailer park came in and asked if I had a box. Curious, I asked him, “For what?”
“A cat.”
Alarms started going off in my head. “You mean for Michael’s cat—the kitten?”
“Yes, we’ve been trying to feed it milk with an eyedropper, but it hasn’t taken much.”
“Well, you shouldn’t give it milk (I explained why). Can you go up to Wal-Mart and get some KMR for me? If you do that, I’ll take care of feeding it.”
“Ok,” he said, and left.
My anxiety level raised as I began to wonder where the cat was, if they would get me the KMR before I had to leave work and go home, and if I would even have the cat by that time. In a while, Michael came back and pulled the same kitten out of his jacket. “She didn’t ever come back and it keeps hollering. I can’t stand it any longer.” He handed me the kitten.
This time I looked at it closely. It was light orange and fat. I could see that this kitten had been well fed, and certainly hadn’t been abandoned, but, now, it was too late. As I looked at it again, I realized that, thank God, it was not a newborn. It was a couple of weeks old—old enough to feed with a syringe.
So, I took it and put it into a box to take home with me.
The other guy never came back by the time I closed the store, but, because he knew I lived nearby, I hoped he’d show up later, back from Wal-Mart with the KMR. He never did.
I wanted to feed the kitten immediately—as much to ally my anxiety to be sure the kitten would eat as to feed the kitten, which was now sleeping in the box. Having confronted similar circumstances before, realizing that the kitten was old enough to eat pureed cat food, I got out my strainer, mashed some canned cat food through it, and mixed in some water. With rising anxiety, again, I prepared the mixture, put it in the syringe, picked up the cat and stuck the nipple into his mouth.
“Thank God!” I said, as he immediately began to suck the mixture down. I, then, knew that, at least, he would eat, and I would probably not have to undergo the heartbreak of trying to feed a kitten that won’t take food, only to watch it slowly die as I regularly punished it by trying to force feed it. “Thank God!”
That all happened over three months ago. In some ways, not much has happened since. He (it was a male cat) is eating well, fatter than ever, and very healthy.
In other ways, a lot has happened:
For my entire life (I’m well over 60 years old), I’ve had cats. From number one, “Tony” when I was 5 or 6 years old, to as many as 45, when, after my mother died, I let one of the cats that I loved (orange, also) out one night, and he never came back. I started searching the animal shelters for him, often unable to resist rescuing cats from “death row” after having looked into their eyes. In ensuing frantic, heartbreaking visits to animal shelters, I started rescuing cats, to the point that the number reached 45, from young to old.
Then, one night, in my neighborhood, I saw a young cat, seemingly homeless, which I took home and added to my “collection.” Not realizing that I needed to isolate the new cat before introducing to my cal population to be sure it was well and had no diseases, in a day or so, it was obviously sick and died. By then, it was too late, it had circulated among my other cats and apparently spread the mysterious fast-moving disease. Within a day or so, one cat got sick and rapidly died, then another, then another--I lost 11 in a single week. This led me, eventually, to a nervous breakdown.
A year or so later, I migrated to California from Colorado--taking 35 cats with me—another experience that is a story in itself.
Since then, my cat population has “stabilized” to somewhere between 5 to15. (My mother always said, “Don’t count. You’re happier not knowing.”) The problem is, as I have always said, “I never saw a cat I didn’t want.”
So, now, here I was—with another cat.
But, this one was “different.”
It’s hard to explain how much this baby cat has affected my life.
I’m still feeding him with a syringe—six, seven, eight-plus times a day. He’s over three months old, and should have been eating on his own for a while now. But, when I put regular canned cat food down in front of him—even when he is hungry—he abruptly turns and runs from it as if it were going to bite him.
I mix his food (Gerber’s baby meats) several times a day, being careful to regularly mix pureed vegetables so he doesn’t get constipated.
He’s my baby. I’m his mother. And, just like a mother cat that will nurse her kittens long after they are grown, I’m still feeding him with a syringe, unable to resist his desire to be fed immediately, to allow him to get hungry enough to venture eating some food on his own.
Of course, I also realize that when he starts eating on his own, he won’t need me in the same way anymore.
For a while, I feared that, somehow, he was born without the ability to smell. (Cats won’t eat if they can’t smell something because, otherwise, they can’t determine that it is food.) But, when he was old enough, I put a pork chop bone with some fat and meat on it down by him to see what he’d do. I left him alone and watched from a distance, because if I’m nearby, he focuses his attention on me. I watched in disbelief as he actually sniffed it a couple of times and then stuck his tongue out and licked it briefly. I was very happy. It appeared that, indeed, he did have a sense of smell. However, it was followed by immediate disappointment as he turned and walked away from it. That was it: happiness and then despair.
When he was a little baby and had to be fed every two or three hours, I managed because, most of the time, I work at home, so I was available to fix his food and feed him. However, when I had to go to work at the store, I couldn’t leave him home alone, so I put him in a box with a heating pad in it, and took him with me. Then, at the store, he would get out of the box and roam around behind the counter with me as I worked.
Originally, I kept up his regular feedings. Now, I just wait, because when he’s hungry, he comes up to me, looks me in the eyes and meows. I know the sound just like a human mother knows the hunger cry of her child.
Once, something that he ate made him very sick. It must have been some old cat food. Anyway, I couldn't find him anywhere. Finally, I looked under a table There he was laying, very sick and apparently waiting to die. Although it was late at night, I took him immediately to a 24-hour vet hospital in a neighboring town for immediate attention. They said he was very sick, and they weren't sure he'd pull through. So I left him there overnight and prayed. The next morning, I called, and, miraculously, he had survived and could go home with medication. So, with that life-threatening experience behind us, we returned “normal” life.
He went where I'd go if I was going to be away from home for more than four or five hours: To work every weekend for two days, and, when Thanksgiving came, and I was invited to my nephew’s, I packed Itty (That’s what I call him most of the time: “Kitty” without the “K.” Sometimes I call him “Waggy” because of the way that he wags his tail like a dog.), and took him with me to Santa Cruz for a day and a night (where he easily made new friends, as he always does wherever he goes). By this time, after riding in the car to work every weekend, he took the long road trip in stride like a seasoned traveler. (I told friends at the store who know his story that, “He likes to travel. Now, he wants to go to Paris.”)
Itty walks kind of funny. When he was younger, he was so fat that he rolled as much as he walked. When he was very small, I always put him into a cat carrier with a heating pad to sleep because I kept him in a room with some other growing kittens (that I was also brought from the trailer park) a month or two older than he was. I was afraid that, because they played a little rough for him, they might hurt him. Well, of course, one time, I let him out of the cage and was drawn away for too long, when I got back he was suddenly not walking. I figured that one of the older ones had been playing and injured him. I took Itty to the vet, and they found a cracked pelvis. He couldn’t walk for several days, but the vet’s prognosis was that he would gradually recover and be able to walk again. Indeed, he did recover, but between his fat stomach and slightly crippled gait, he has an odd way of walking and running—not really lame, but off-kilter.
But, nearing four months, he walked and ran and played a lot. He challenged and annoyed the larger cats, and, still not aware until it is too late that he has pushed them too far, squawks when they start to get too rough, and I have to rescue him.
This little baby cat has had a strong impact in my life. We have developed a kind of ESP. When he is out of my field of vision, I look around for him and feel anxious until I know where he is. Regardless of what he is doing, when I look down at him, he suddenly looks up at me and stares into my eyes intently, as if he is aware that I am thinking about him, looking for him.
He has very large, intelligent eyes.
When I think about it—how human and personable he is—I am not sure that I have reconciled myself to the fact that he will not grow up to be a human being.
He’s a baby cat, and I am an old man, and when you are my age, you don’t just think about beginnings and middles; you also think about the endings.
When I am feeding him, and looking into his eyes, and he is looking trustingly into mine, I occasionally think, “Who will go first, him or me?” I don’t want to think of either alternative, although, of course, one way or the other, this will come to pass. I don’t want to think about his life if I were gone and not there to take care of him--to look into his big, trusting eyes and feed him if he wants it. But, it would surely break my heart to lose him. It’s not like I don’t also love my other cats, and it would hurt me to lose any of them, but, I have a special bond with this baby cat. He’s like a child I couldn’t bear to lose.
And, so, I try not to think about it.
I pick him up and marvel at his solidness and the effect of this little life in my life—and me in his, too. I hold him in my hand, his heart beating, big eyes looking wonderingly into mine, and I wonder about the power of love between an old man and a baby cat….
Postscript: Itty (“Dude” became his name for a while, but now it back to Itty) in not over 12 years old. These events all too place a long time ago, 2009. He is feisty and almost as much of a baby as ever. He’s curled in my lap as I write this. He’s been eating on his own for many years now--plenty. He taught himself to eat dry cat food. He’s still small, from a background of small-framed cats, I guess. Not the size of a regular adult cat.
He’s doing fine, and I'm doing fine for my age, now over 80, and we're still both getting older….