A few months ago, we got a call from the daughter while she and her brother were out at their grandparents’ house in the middle of nowhere. There was this feral pack of cats out by the barn, and one in particular was being bullied by all the others. She was the runt of the litter, so I assume that probably had something to do with it.
She was the only one that didn’t seem completely feral; she was the only one who came up to the house and screamed for food all the time, even though she was so little she probably should’ve still been nursing. But her mom wanted nothing to do with her, so she survived on crunchies from way too early an age.
Anyway, she calls her mom and asks if she can bring her home. Surely she’d die out there with no support from the rest of the strays or even her own mother, and she and her brother had already fallen in love with the fucking thing.
When I heard what was going on, I said absolutely not. We already have four cats — my senior tuxedo cat, Pepper, who has been my sidekick since 2010; a scrappy gray cat named Smokey, who we rescued from the streets when we lived in the hood; a blue-eyed, brown-and-blonde-furred ragdoll named Zoey; and her son, also a tuxedo cat: Donut.
We also have an obnoxious little rat terrier. I’m not a dog person, and he’s absolutely unhinged, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love the little bastard just as much as the cats.
We have our hands full, is what I’m getting at here.
It’s a small fortune to feed them all wet food twice a day and keep crunchies in stock at the automatic feeders that run on a timer. We have a whole goddamn room just for litter boxes, because who wants to share a litter box with everyone else?
So yeah. I shut it down immediately. No fucking way are we getting another cat — especially a kitten who has god knows what kind of diseases and needs all these vaccines and to be spayed…
So my partner says fuck it; yeah, bring her home.
I was absolutely seething. My vote means fuckall, I guess. I didn’t even look at the kitten for the first couple of days. I avoided her like the plague.
I didn’t want to fall in love with yet another animal when we already had a house full. Pepper is about 18 years old, and I’m already feeling anticipatory grief over the inevitable, so I make the most of the time we have left together while also tending to three other cats and a dumb little dog who thinks he’s a cat.
But you can only be a grumpy asshole for so long, you know? I pouted as long as I could, and then the first time I actually let myself see her, I don’t know how I ever could’ve turned her down. And I doubt I would have, if I’d been there when the kids first found her.
One of our first bonding moments was when she came running across the living room and hook-shotted herself right into the end of one of my fingers that was hanging off the armrest of the couch. Tore it open, and I couldn’t get it to stop bleeding to save my life.
Slapped some Neosporin and a Band Aid on it, and it was good as new.
Well, that was months ago. She’s starting to get bigger, she’s healthier, and at least one of our cats actually gets along with her. The other three have been sick of her shit since she moved in with us, but they’re able to coexist. Mostly.
Why am I talking about our personal zoo?
Well, I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of my daughter frantically pacing around and muttering incoherent words through tears; she was absolutely freaking out. My partner jumped out of bed and asked her what was going on, and she said she didn’t know how or why, but she’d accidentally left the back door cracked before she went to bed, and the kitten got outside.
That was around 1 a.m. They went out into the backyard with the light of their phones, searching every corner of the fenced-in yard. They crawled down in the mud and looked under the deck. They looked in and around the shed; under the shed, under a patch of brush near the fire pit. They checked the garage, went up and down the streets, but she was nowhere.
I heard her panicking and saying, “There’s no way she’s going to survive out there. She’s so little and she’s never been outside since we rescued her,” followed by ugly tears. It was heartbreaking.
It was obvious that no one was going to find her in the middle of the night when she’d already been out there for god knows how long, and we all had to work in the morning, so everyone went back to bed. Although I doubt she was able to get much sleep.
I felt so fucking heartbroken for her.
I woke up to my girlfriend saying she was leaving for work, and after she clicked the door closed, the house fell eerily silent. The daughter could barely utter a word when I told her “good morning,” and I get it. She just lost her best friend in the world, and I couldn’t realistically guarantee that the kitten would find her way back.
Thoughts of some random neighbor thinking she was a stray and taking her… the pound finding her and bringing her downtown. A million terrible thoughts were racing through my head, and I’m sure even more through hers.
I did one more search of the backyard; the shed, the deck, the garage, near the fire pit… There were no signs of a tiny little void of a kitten anywhere. I even got up on the deck and tried to visually scan the huge field behind our house for any inkling of life, but it was dead silent and calm, aside from a few birds I occasionally mistook for the little chirp of her tiny meow.
I told her I was leaving for work, and I hoped she would have a good day, and she just muttered in a quiet little raspy voice, “I’ll try.”
I was at work for about an hour when I texted her mom how bad I felt for her and her brother. That was their first grown-up pet together; they loved this thing more than life itself, and it was gone. Maybe forever. That fucking blows.
She texted me back:
oh, they found the cat. Was in her closet sleeping on a pillow the whole time.
Are you fucking kidding me?! Our world was turned upside down, and this little shit was just sleeping on a luxury, high-density memory foam pillow in the closet, without a care in the world.
A few months ago, we got a call from the daughter while she and her brother were out at their grandparents’ house in the middle of nowhere. There was this feral pack of cats out by the barn, and one in particular was being bullied by all the others. She was the runt of the litter, so I assume that probably had something to do with it.
She was the only one that didn’t seem completely feral; she was the only one who came up to the house and screamed for food all the time, even though she was so little she probably should’ve still been nursing. But her mom wanted nothing to do with her, so she survived on crunchies from way too early an age.
Anyway, she calls her mom and asks if she can bring her home. Surely she’d die out there with no support from the rest of the strays or even her own mother, and she and her brother had already fallen in love with the fucking thing.
When I heard what was going on, I said absolutely not. We already have four cats — my senior tuxedo cat, Pepper, who has been my sidekick since 2010; a scrappy gray cat named Smokey, who we rescued from the streets when we lived in the hood; a blue-eyed, brown-and-blonde-furred ragdoll named Zoey; and her son, also a tuxedo cat: Donut.
We also have an obnoxious little rat terrier. I’m not a dog person, and he’s absolutely unhinged, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love the little bastard just as much as the cats.
We have our hands full, is what I’m getting at here.
It’s a small fortune to feed them all wet food twice a day and keep crunchies in stock at the automatic feeders that run on a timer. We have a whole goddamn room just for litter boxes, because who wants to share a litter box with everyone else?
So yeah. I shut it down immediately. No fucking way are we getting another cat — especially a kitten who has god knows what kind of diseases and needs all these vaccines and to be spayed…
So my partner says fuck it; yeah, bring her home.
I was absolutely seething. My vote means fuckall, I guess. I didn’t even look at the kitten for the first couple of days. I avoided her like the plague.
I didn’t want to fall in love with yet another animal when we already had a house full. Pepper is about 18 years old, and I’m already feeling anticipatory grief over the inevitable, so I make the most of the time we have left together while also tending to three other cats and a dumb little dog who thinks he’s a cat.
But you can only be a grumpy asshole for so long, you know? I pouted as long as I could, and then the first time I actually let myself see her, I don’t know how I ever could’ve turned her down. And I doubt I would have, if I’d been there when the kids first found her.
One of our first bonding moments was when she came running across the living room and hook-shotted herself right into the end of one of my fingers that was hanging off the armrest of the couch. Tore it open, and I couldn’t get it to stop bleeding to save my life.
Slapped some Neosporin and a Band Aid on it, and it was good as new.
Well, that was months ago. She’s starting to get bigger, she’s healthier, and at least one of our cats actually gets along with her. The other three have been sick of her shit since she moved in with us, but they’re able to coexist. Mostly.
Why am I talking about our personal zoo?
Well, I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of my daughter frantically pacing around and muttering incoherent words through tears; she was absolutely freaking out. My partner jumped out of bed and asked her what was going on, and she said she didn’t know how or why, but she’d accidentally left the back door cracked before she went to bed, and the kitten got outside.
That was around 1 a.m. They went out into the backyard with the light of their phones, searching every corner of the fenced-in yard. They crawled down in the mud and looked under the deck. They looked in and around the shed; under the shed, under a patch of brush near the fire pit. They checked the garage, went up and down the streets, but she was nowhere.
I heard her panicking and saying, “There’s no way she’s going to survive out there. She’s so little and she’s never been outside since we rescued her,” followed by ugly tears. It was heartbreaking.
It was obvious that no one was going to find her in the middle of the night when she’d already been out there for god knows how long, and we all had to work in the morning, so everyone went back to bed. Although I doubt she was able to get much sleep.
I felt so fucking heartbroken for her.
I woke up to my girlfriend saying she was leaving for work, and after she clicked the door closed, the house fell eerily silent. The daughter could barely utter a word when I told her “good morning,” and I get it. She just lost her best friend in the world, and I couldn’t realistically guarantee that the kitten would find her way back.
Thoughts of some random neighbor thinking she was a stray and taking her… the pound finding her and bringing her downtown. A million terrible thoughts were racing through my head, and I’m sure even more through hers.
I did one more search of the backyard; the shed, the deck, the garage, near the fire pit… There were no signs of a tiny little void of a kitten anywhere. I even got up on the deck and tried to visually scan the huge field behind our house for any inkling of life, but it was dead silent and calm, aside from a few birds I occasionally mistook for the little chirp of her tiny meow.
I told her I was leaving for work, and I hoped she would have a good day, and she just muttered in a quiet little raspy voice, “I’ll try.”
I was at work for about an hour when I texted her mom how bad I felt for her and her brother. That was their first grown-up pet together; they loved this thing more than life itself, and it was gone. Maybe forever. That fucking blows.
She texted me back:
Are you fucking kidding me?! Our world was turned upside down, and this little shit was just sleeping on a luxury, high-density memory foam pillow in the closet, without a care in the world.
Cats are assholes.