Kitty at our Doorstep
On my way to school with Bash one morning, I open the door,
lead Bash out, and find a little kitten staggering onto the compound. This kitten
is wobbly, and you can tell it was abandoned by her mom. This is the typical
malnourished third world kitten on her last leg, and her suffocated meow will
hardly reach her mother, wherever she is. The way things stand now, this kitten
will be an appetizer for the crows and little else.
Luckily, she came to the right place. As a Peace Corps
Volunteer in Morocco, I was in the business of adopting abandoned kittens and
putting them up in my apartment. It seemed that every day when I would come home from
work, I would hear another desperate squeak coming from the bushes, and there would
be another kitten, left in the streets to die.
As callous as it sounds, this isn’t surprising, really. For cats in first world countries, having kittens is a snap. The mother is usually well fed and she will be able to feed her kittens for as long as they please. In developing countries, life is different for kitties. There are not many households for pets, let alone households who can afford to feed them, offer medical treatment when needed, etc. So the cats here fight for scraps wherever they can find them. As soon as the mother cats give birth to kittens, they will have enough milk for one kitten, maybe two…the weakened runts will be abandoned and left to fend for themselves, their fate as predictable as the Dar es Salaam weather.
In Morocco, I was able to save at least a dozen kittens. In essence, I was running a kitty orphanage. These kittens would later be given up for adoption, usually to fellow Peace Corps Volunteers. I still have the first kitten, the Ginger Cat, from that undertaking almost 14 years later. Left to die as a Moroccan trash cat in the streets of Beni Mellal, she is a now a healthy princess with a swagger about her after having traveled around the world with us.
What the Ginger Cat probably wasn’t counting on was a flashback to her Moroccan days when she had to actually share her quarters with other cats. With the new kitten I’d found, this was now a distinct possibility. Bash was tickled pink at the prospect of adding a new pet to the house, especially a kitty as little as this one. This one was an orange and white striped tabby, and Bash immediately made friends with her (it was a female).
First, she needed to survive. I brought her inside, fed her some water (no milk! Cats are lactose intolerant!) and a little wet food that she meekly lapped up. You could tell this cat was exhausted. I am guessing she had hunted for her mother all night and finally, with no place to go, started knocking on doors. Lying on her sofa, she quickly went to sleep, curled up and purring in no time. I asked the housekeeper to keep a close eye on her while I was gone.
After dropping off Bash and running a few errands, I returned home. The kitten was still on the couch. Not good, I am thinking. Little kittens usually have enough energy to burn down a barn. So this kitten was very tired. Was I alarmed? Not really. I had picked up kittens in far worse shape, or so I thought. She was given a little more water and wet food.
By the afternoon, she still hadn’t gotten up from the couch. Bash had returned from school by now, and he was already thinking about names for the kitty. She had huge ears, so we thought about names like ‘Batman’. I shopped for milk replacement at a nearby pet store, because this kitten would need more nutrients in the worst way.
When I returned home, it was clear the cat was dying. The past few days had taken too much of a toll on her, plus there were probably parasites eating her alive. Add to that the heartbreak of being abandoned by her mother, and all these factors suddenly become fatal.
She would last another hour before I finally had to remove her little skinny and limp body from the house. Had she survived if I had brought her to a shelter? That will forever remain debatable, I suppose. But again, I had taken in cats in far worse shape and nursed them back to health. It was a judgment call, and we will never know what the shelter would have done with her, although I have an idea. I liked her chances better with me. It’s so sad this one didn’t make it.
Gone was the kitty—at three weeks of age, tops. It seems so unfair. I wish there was such a thing as reincarnation. How messed up would that be if this were that kitty’s only time around the wheel.
The boys took the news in stride. The kitty had died. She was too sick. They got over that news in no time. After all, they had only known the kitty for a few hours.
RIP, kitty. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.
As callous as it sounds, this isn’t surprising, really. For cats in first world countries, having kittens is a snap. The mother is usually well fed and she will be able to feed her kittens for as long as they please. In developing countries, life is different for kitties. There are not many households for pets, let alone households who can afford to feed them, offer medical treatment when needed, etc. So the cats here fight for scraps wherever they can find them. As soon as the mother cats give birth to kittens, they will have enough milk for one kitten, maybe two…the weakened runts will be abandoned and left to fend for themselves, their fate as predictable as the Dar es Salaam weather.
In Morocco, I was able to save at least a dozen kittens. In essence, I was running a kitty orphanage. These kittens would later be given up for adoption, usually to fellow Peace Corps Volunteers. I still have the first kitten, the Ginger Cat, from that undertaking almost 14 years later. Left to die as a Moroccan trash cat in the streets of Beni Mellal, she is a now a healthy princess with a swagger about her after having traveled around the world with us.
What the Ginger Cat probably wasn’t counting on was a flashback to her Moroccan days when she had to actually share her quarters with other cats. With the new kitten I’d found, this was now a distinct possibility. Bash was tickled pink at the prospect of adding a new pet to the house, especially a kitty as little as this one. This one was an orange and white striped tabby, and Bash immediately made friends with her (it was a female).
First, she needed to survive. I brought her inside, fed her some water (no milk! Cats are lactose intolerant!) and a little wet food that she meekly lapped up. You could tell this cat was exhausted. I am guessing she had hunted for her mother all night and finally, with no place to go, started knocking on doors. Lying on her sofa, she quickly went to sleep, curled up and purring in no time. I asked the housekeeper to keep a close eye on her while I was gone.
After dropping off Bash and running a few errands, I returned home. The kitten was still on the couch. Not good, I am thinking. Little kittens usually have enough energy to burn down a barn. So this kitten was very tired. Was I alarmed? Not really. I had picked up kittens in far worse shape, or so I thought. She was given a little more water and wet food.
By the afternoon, she still hadn’t gotten up from the couch. Bash had returned from school by now, and he was already thinking about names for the kitty. She had huge ears, so we thought about names like ‘Batman’. I shopped for milk replacement at a nearby pet store, because this kitten would need more nutrients in the worst way.
When I returned home, it was clear the cat was dying. The past few days had taken too much of a toll on her, plus there were probably parasites eating her alive. Add to that the heartbreak of being abandoned by her mother, and all these factors suddenly become fatal.
She would last another hour before I finally had to remove her little skinny and limp body from the house. Had she survived if I had brought her to a shelter? That will forever remain debatable, I suppose. But again, I had taken in cats in far worse shape and nursed them back to health. It was a judgment call, and we will never know what the shelter would have done with her, although I have an idea. I liked her chances better with me. It’s so sad this one didn’t make it.
Gone was the kitty—at three weeks of age, tops. It seems so unfair. I wish there was such a thing as reincarnation. How messed up would that be if this were that kitty’s only time around the wheel.
The boys took the news in stride. The kitty had died. She was too sick. They got over that news in no time. After all, they had only known the kitty for a few hours.
RIP, kitty. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.
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