My Newest Love

Have I told you about Max?

I was upset one Friday, and instead of just reading at the office for the looong Friday lunch, I decided to head to town with no better reason than to buy jelly ice-cream at KFC. I had just gotten my ice-cream and was walking back to my car when I turned the corner and found her.

She was more than half-dead when I found her sprawled by a post on the five-foot way with people simply stepping over her to get past. It was one of the most pathetic sights I had ever seen. Stray cats, no matter what, never sleep out in the open. Their survival depends on it, and here she was - so weak she didn't even have to strength to find a quiet place to lie - and die.

I sat on the curb next to her, next to the smelly drain catching run-offs from the nearby mamak. I watched over her, and waited for her mother to return to claim her. I knew, though, that it was futile. The weakest are always abandoned.

Her fur was so matted that she appeared almost bald. She was so malnourished I could count her ribs even from where I was sitting. Her eyes were so gummed up with mucus she couldn't open them. Cat flu, maybe even pneumonia. I've taken home some of those, they never survived, but never had I seen one in such a sorry state. The whole time I watched over her, she was absolutely motionless, save for the barest rising and falling of her shallow breaths.

After almost an hour, I picked her up. She was so small she barely filled my one cupped palm and so thin she weighed almost nothing at all! I could've wept. She couldn't have been more than five or six weeks old. She was so weak she didn't even have the energy to mew nevermind move when I picked her up, and I put her in my car. With my ice-cream. I had forgotten all about it.

I managed to find a vet, and had to call him away from his lunch to see to her. It didn't look optimistic, but even if she would die, I couldn't find it in me to leave her there. Even strays were worthy of some dignity and I would've cared for her until she passed on. Hell and God (and my mother!) knows that I've done that for many a stray.

The vet treated her for the pneumonia and worms, and gave her a glucose jab. She was too weak to even eat. The prognosis was not good, and the vet offered to put her down instead.

I took her home in a box and left her to recuperate while I was at work.

It is amazing what only two weeks of food does. She is now unrecognizable as the kitten I picked up that jelly-ice-cream Friday. She darts across rooms and scales my sofas as though she were a monkey. Her belly is now beautifully rounded and pink as kitten's bellies should be. Her ears are twice the size of her komeng face, and after two weeks of daily wet-wipe cleaning (which she strangely enjoys!) her fur is a beautiful tortoise-shell tabby. She has beautiful jungle-cat spots and stripes.

Her eyes - and personality - are huge and amazingly alert. She's an absolute ball of energy, a far cry from the lifeless thing I picked up off the sidewalk! And she is incredibly affectionate, one of the most affectionate cats I've ever come across. She is absolutely fearless with humans, and a prickly little hissing thing when other cats pass by outside her door! Lol. Oh, and it took only an hour to litter-train her, I kid you not.

She refuses to let me pet her, unless she wants it. She wrestles with me ferociously instead! And then she finds her way into the crook of my arms, the crook of my knees even if only for a nap.

She never strays far from me when I am home. She has a favourite shelf in the kitchen she naps on while I cook and have my dinner. She plays near the TV cabinet when I'm watching the ole Astro. She curls up in my lap and scales up and down the sofa (and sometimes the curtain!) when I read. She nibbles at my toes while I'm on the 'net. She finds her way to me every night when I sleep. She loves to sleep under my chin, with my breath on her belly.

:O)

The opportunity to love so deeply and be adored back in return doesn't present itself very often. I have been so fortunate as to have found - and to have been found by! - two.

My hunnybunch, I love you. :O)

I must be one of the luckiest women in the world.