I wasn’t always the cat person that
I have turned into now. In my childhood,
my brother and father were so allergic to cats, that if they even touched them,
they would break out into a rash and immediately start sneezing. Now as you can imagine we did not have any
cats in or around our house, but I remember my best friend, when I was younger,
had a black and white cat named Mittens.
She was the coolest cat I had ever seen, and I loved her. I loved the
way she looked, and she was the softest animal I had ever touched. I think a big part of my early obsession was based
around the fact that you want what you can’t have. Never-the-less, my love for these feline
friends grew.
Fast
forward ten years and I am now in high school, and now volunteer at the local
animal hospital where I lived. I loved
playing with all the animals of course, but my favorite part was feeding and
socializing the cats. Don’t get me wrong
the dogs were fun too, but they were so loud and hyper and they involved lots
of walks and running, not my thing. The
cats, on the other hand, just wanted to lie in my lap, eat treats, and play
with any sort of feather on a stick. I
loved spending every other night with them and I knew then and there I was
going to get a cat as soon as I was physically able.
A few years
later, once in college and out of the dorms, I was finally on my own, and I
knew it would only be a mater of time before I was the proud owner of my own
kitty cat. My roommate and I moved into
an apartment that we knew would let us have pets, and before we even had a
couch in our apartment we had gotten a little grey kitten off of
craigslist. I was so happy I could
barely contain myself. I got every little
collar and kitten toy that was available at the pet store. We named her Alice and she was the best little kitten you
could have asked for.
After a
week or two of living with us our beautiful little Alice started acting very different then she
had been earlier. She stopped eating and
we noticed that her eyes seemed dull. Being
that she was so small we took her in right away to see what was wrong with
her. After several test we found that
our little kitten had toxoplasmosis, which is a disease that affects the lungs,
liver, and nervous system. It seems that
the Alice ’s
mother, and farm cat, had probably hunted and eaten something with the disease
while pregnant and transferred the diseases to the kittens. We tried putting her on some of the
antibiotics to help her fight it, but she was to small and young to fight it
off. Two days later I lost my beautiful
little kitten.
Losing that
kitten was really hard on me, as I’m sure it would be for most people. I picked it out myself and had it just long
enough to fall head over heels in love with it.
My roommate, who was not nearly effected as me, adopted herself another
kitten a few months later and encouraged me to do the same. I thought long and hard about it, but I still
wasn’t ready just yet. I knew I would
eventually want another little guy, but it just wasn’t the time yet. A few days later she adopted a little bundle
of piss and vinegar that was just so cute and naughty that you couldn’t help
but lover her. I was glad she got her
kitten and she made us both happier. It
was nice to her the pitter of little paws around the house again, and little
did I know she would help me find the cat of my dreams.
Most people
will agree that people in some way shape or form are like the pets that they
have. Some people look a little like
them, or maybe it’s just an attitude that owner and pet share, but we all love
and relate to our pets in some way. This
was the case when I found my Optimus Prime, I know it’s a weird name but that’s
for another blog post. We took little
Memow in for her six month visit to the vet, and while she was getting worked
on we wandered through the adoption section of the human society to look at the
cats. The person with the cats let us
play with a couple while she had them out and I was instantly drawn to a
beautiful white and black cat. He was
nicest guy in the world, but wasn’t afraid to get what he wanted, whether it
was a treat or a toy he found a way to get it.
When they were wrapping up and putting some of the cats away I noticed
they put him in a cage with a red dot on it.
Curious, I asked what the dot was for, and they told me that it
unfortunately meant that he had been there to long and was scheduled for
euthanasia. I simply walked over took
the dot off his cage and said no he’s not he is mine.
Most people
when I tell them this story give me an “awe” or a “good for you,” but I’m not
the only hero. Yes, I did save the cats
life, but I’m sure as most people with pets agree that they also save your
life. He has been there for me through
stress, loss, and hard times. It is hard
to ignore the unconditional love of a pet, I always get a little sad when I
think of my first little kitten, but as they say everything happens for a
reason. I am so thankful for the little
guy that I have, and wouldn’t change it for anything.
