(I edited this a bunch of times as I wrote it at 2:30 AM holding a kitten)
Last Sunday I drove over to the Petco in Ventura to get kitty litter for my 7 or so month old HUGE kitty. He was born with "shaky head" and my neurologist daughter Sylvia proclaims him "brain damaged"-so ok he's a bit of a very limited fellow. Mr. One Note. I love him. Anyway, once there, we saw kittens for adoption by Cat's Cradle. I admit I like to peruse the cages feeling both delight and real sadness over their predicament. No harm in looking. Sometimes it kills me actually to see the cats and kittens. I grew up with cats and love them.
Apparently enough to over-ride even the most minimal of self restraint.
Yes, this is the piece on my impulsive nature.
My other daughter (in the sense the one I've cited here is another daughter than this one) who will go unnamed because she says it hurts her to be connected to me at any job she'll ever have, my sweetheart daughter who says she might move out and crush me to nothingness in doing so, allowed me to look at the kitties. We both adored two of the kitties. It shocked me they had so MANY up for adopting. One is sitting here at present- looking at my finches at 2 AM. After a rip roaring session of play up and down my stairs, waking me here at two AM, she and my other kitty know exactly how to "have a good time."
She's really the kittycat who adopted me last Sunday.
Tonight we are trying "being out in the house" overnight-instead of in my daughter's old room-or a mini lock up. It's going well if everyone being up past mid-night to play is the criterion for judging. I wasn't sleeping after losing Mom, now I'm desperate to sleep-a bit of reverse psychology. So far either way -no sleep. After months it's hard. With blood pressure through the roof also not especially safe.
Here's my precious-my first gift to myself since Mom died-she is named Mysty Jean because her foster Mom, who reminded me of me- named her Mysty. I also kinda call her dewdrop, little nutters and sometimes precious or Jean or whatever pops out of my mouth, depending on how it's going. Mysty, the name spelled in that California way, is going to stick though. Her foster Mom deserves that-she did a marvelous job-sh also chose her name. The kitten is wonderful with me.
Here is her picture:
She's VERY tiny, a bag of bones. Very wonderful bones.
Very smart bones, she had the house mapped in about an hour. The differences between my kitties thing one and thing two- is enormous. The boy kitty (Dwight, Tobbers, Kiki-I cannot "name" him) has a damaged cerebrum, among the things he can't do are-map out the house, stop himself from shaking like a leaf when if he's concentrating, solve things, keep from banging into his head if running, be confident, stop from being a rigid, inflexible kitty, be more than 5 feet away from me, so on. He loves water. He'll shower or bathe with me if I don't stop him. Having a huge full size kitty rolling around in your tub sucks, but he will jump right in if I don't stop him. Kiki's colored like a tiger, and tigers like water, so I tend to think -yep- he's my tiger. Jack stated if he magically grew to tiger size I'd be his dinner. Perhaps the lack of water fear comes from giving him a bath when I first got him. I'd killed over 90 fleas in that afternoon waiting to see the vet the next day, and was trying to de-flea him which met with poor success. That many fleas is dangerous to a small kitty. He was just over 4 weeks, from a totally feral litter adopted by a saint, and I thought most likely anemic and with the bobble head for sure a serious risk for an accident. Or his end. I'm pretty sure that fixed in his mind to equate baths with me (and in his mind to remind you-I'm a goddess) an association I adore. Also I'm his Momma and occasional altar.
So little kitty on every measure has out performed him. At nine weeks!
She has also taught him a few tricks too- though retracting his claws is not happening in my lifetime. She has been sure to sleep in every favorite spot of his, use only his litter box over hers -the one that cost 35 bucks, eat in his dishes while he's trying to stop her or complain, and generally as Sophia said in one minute his entire existence was thrown upside down. Her.
However he follows her like he follows me, and purts incredibly to talk to her-riproaring with her in chases- loves when she plays chase through the house, and he has taken this on as his personal duty to see through. In short they are doing well together. Very fine.
She simply immediately goes right up to him saying hello-and he runs for the hills kinda scared; what I enjoy is seeing her spunk. My husband-who was so furious over this adoption and truthfully did not speak until my blood pressure spiked to some ungodly number Tuesday, has called her bright, while reminding me my poor yellow kitty is "just Dumb, Sarah." Oh, what a cruel world it is. To give varying degrees of smarts-mean indeed.
What happened in the store was impulse. I've battled this all my life.
Like the double edge sword it gave me the good, bad, and lots of responsibility after the fact.
She was looking so incredibly like everything I ever wanted-and boom- I signed up. She is exactly who I thought she was-even more amazing-and here I am at two thirty AM!
It makes me reflect on my patterns-some were really quite wonderful. Some defenses that I've outgrown intellectually. But like most deeply held beliefs and systems of survival looking hard at the things I do requires a great deal of reflection. wanting love at Christmastime-that's deep seated. My father always made Christmas a difficult time because for him it was a pool to fall and wallow in. The deep poverty of his young life wounded and the holiday seemed to contain every injury he ever suffered. All Dad seems capable of at Christmas is perpetuating those hurts. That said....
When I was young we adopted two cats-one a Manx named Cally. She was a calico-truly a genius-and killed by a garbage truck apparently on purpose-two years after we got her- crushing the life out of me. She'd had her kittens one summer- given away at my Mother's insistence-dying that fall. So I never fully recovered from her loss, and how I learned of the notion of death first-hand. Cally had taken away all of my longing for love and acceptance in my home. She was able to care for me unconditionally. I'm in similar times now after losing Mom- when I can't see things being just ok and all the evidence mounts up for hard times. Cally's sister, Blackberry, gave me Peachface in her litter, and later Peaches kitten Bootsie came along. Bootsie was the Buddha, Christ, pure love on earth.. Peachface was killed by Mr. Moore speeding down our street murdering cats with his car. Forgiving him failed to wash away what he'd done. Bootsie, a long haired orange (don't strange and orange rhyme?) kitty was the closest I ever came to a child, until I had a child. Her loss tore an open hole in me. Some pets are so much more. Bootsie considered me a chair.
I raised all these kitties and a few others basically healing wounds in my family as I went.
Yes, I see that now.
Patterns.
a great argument for pets-I believe they helped me express love.
I wanted to tell the story here of being in 4th grade and coming home to find my Mom gave away Cally and Blackberry (saying nothing to me beforehand as she capitulated to my father's bitching about them-I stood outside crying for the longest saddest time that day crushed beyond speaking by yet another betrayal)-they got back in about an hour-Blackberry two days actually-from the WVUDairy Barn, a farm less than a mile away-but I find I can't tell that story. Can't bring up that day.
So, instead let's just say that when life was very hard on me young- I looked to my cats to keep me locked in the fully present, present.
Cats, for me, bring NOW.
And this little bundle is doing the same thing for me. At 2:30 AM. She's so much like Bootsie- who died of feline leukemia just months before the shots arrived so, thankfully, others could be spared that horror. I wasn't spared but we were on the forefront of chemo development for several thousand- and working then to survive, so my vet (a lovely vet) tried that chemo on Bootsie-no luck but the steroids seemed to stall the inevitable. Making minimum wage-then $3.25 I was not only responsible for a grandmum with Alzheimer's, my Mom in a breakdown- I now know was the aftermath of a stroke, a Dad paying $100 a month so he could "get free" and marry a woman my age- I had my kitty to help me until he was devastated by the disease and I paid all I had to try to save him. Looking back I think few kitties were as remarkable as that one-the human scarf -but this kitty reminds me in someways of that one-yes it's true.
I suspect missing my Mother, and equally devastated by her death, I simply re-invented something that worked once as my defense against the pain and sheer loneliness. Over the depression perhaps it'll work.
I'm trying the process of having to cuddle and take care of a love in the here and now. Lacking a person to step up I settled for my kitty.
People often hurt-but cats I can better understand-which speaks to my quirkiness. After peritonitis and cancer and invasions into body and psyche too much to name- Mom's passing has brought back a lot of tough times . Boom= process that..
So I adopted- to make a self pity session shorter. In an impulse last Sunday with my daughter at Petco. She weighs a pound.
When impulse shopping I find a good rule is-travel with a cat carrier-you just never know.
I absolutely enjoy your stories. And that kitten - PRECIOUS!!! Merry Christmas!
ReplyDelete