This weekend I heard a rodent in my walls mid-sleep and thought that soon I'd need a cat. I don't think I can handle finding another half-alive Socrates with bloody turd streaks across my floor. I need a cat.
The next day, a friend found a kitten. I said I'd take it. After all, a kitten would soon grow into a cat, aka: rodent-killing machine. Cold-blooded carnivore, hungry for mice and rats and cockroaches. Yessssss.
So the friend came over. And in his hand...this...INFANT kitten. Three weeks old at most. Tiny little fart of a feline, but completely adorable. I knew that I wouldn't be a cat-owner or a rat-killing trainer. I'd become a mother.
And so I have. In fact, not only have I been feeding this cat via soggy bread, my finger, a plastic bag (with a hole, more nip-like...kind of a disaster), or any other mechanism for feeding animal infants, but in the last day and a half, I've planned my weekend with time increments for my little Feline. (In Tongan, it's pronounced fay-lee-nay... I call her 'line. Or Turbo. Or Cat.) I woke up early this morning to feed her. I skipped out on the rugby game to feed her. (Well, kind of. I was also tired and didn't want to get cussed out again like I did last time...by the First Lady of Tonga.)
'Line has a little box with an old skirt in it for warmth and such. She's still so tiny that not only does she need extra body warmth, but finds it in strange places. The most prominent would be my foot. My foot is the new designated home. Where I go, 'Line follows my feet.
(AS we speak, she is now eating from the dish! Mama's so proud!)
So my feet='Line's sense of home-comfort. She loves to clamber on top and curl into a little cute kitty-fetal position or just sit there, her little puckered butt right on my tattoo. I assume it's because the floor is chilly, so it makes sense, I suppose.
But she loves attention, TLC. If I'm in the room and not paying attention, she begins a series of melodic tones that sometimes sound as though she's having a conversation with herself. And if i speak to her, she HAS to have the last word.
"Hey, 'Line."
"OW!"
"What do you think, should we watch a comedy or a Disney movie?"
"Reurrrrr."
"Comedy?"
"Err?"
"Disney?"
"Weooowwww."
"Disney it is."
"Rewwoouurrr."
I also gave her a bath today. This was after the plastic-bag disaster, though I think 'Line had the most fun since finding her new foot-home. I put some milk in a bag, poked a hole, and tried to put it in her excited mouth. She was so excited to be completely covered in milk that she ended up belly-up on the ground, mouth open in ecstasy, nose blowing milk-snot-bubbles, lapping up the milk that leaked and dripped from the unsteady bag.
So we had a bath. And she was a champ. She now smells like the blue Herbal Essences. She made nose bubbles in that, too.
'Line also thinks I have multiple locations of milk on my body, including:
-my toes
-my muffin top
-my collar bone
-my face (usually cheeks or lips)
-my hair
Of course, it's cute to have an infant kitten nuzzling your feet, neck and hair, but I'm a bit worried. I'm always the detached party in some intimate form of relationship. So I'm going straight from unattached and happy about it to full-on mom who alternates milk baths with shampoo baths, who cuddles with my infant one minute and shuts her in a guest bedroom with her bed-box the next.
In a nutshell, I'm happy about my new family member. She'll keep me company (though out of milk), she'll become a rat-eating machine (if one doesn't eat her first.)
*As we speak, a rat is running in my kitchen ceiling. A-hole.
Anyway, until she grows and can hold her own in the big outdoors, I'm afraid I'll become attached to this cat. (If she survives random ailments that many infant animals die from here...)
But then, she's gonna be a lean, mean rat-destroying machine...who is currently cleaning herself on my foot. And is leaving milk tracks. Nice.
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