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February 28, 2006

An Unexpected Member in the Family

Filed under: People,Photography — Singari Vijay @ 9:29 pm

Darling Kittaya

During last March, on one of those bitter cold snowy days, a strange cat walked into our kitchen. Though it was very dirty, it wasn’t a usual cat. It had a lot of hair and beautiful long tail. Our neighbor has two cats, but this wasn’t one of those. We thought it was somebody’s cat in the neighborhood, who didn’t take good care of it. It looked around for a minute and went away. Couple of days later it appeared again. It looked like it was looking for something. We again thought that it was somebody’s cat in the neighborhood and we didn’t pay much attention to it. Truthfully, we wanted to send it out of our house.

After another few days, he appeared again on our deck and he had a wound on his tail. Then, we learned some details about him from the kids next-door. They told us that he was an abandoned cat and our neighbor, Lina (who already had two cats) had been taking care of him for a couple of days. We felt sorry that he was wounded, but we didn’t pay much attention to him even at that time. We didn’t pay much attention to him, but he started paying attention to us. He kept coming back to our house everyday. The other two cats of our neighbor never entered our house, though they came sat on our deck sometimes. But, this one would come in and walk around the house, would come to us and would look in the eyes. He made us notice him with his beautiful looks. He was a young cat, may be 4 or 5 months old.

The wound he had on his tail gotten worse. He was with Lina, the neighbor, at that time. She took him to the vet and had a bandage put on his tail. Few days had passed. By this time he was living between our house and our neighbor’s house. He was spending couple of days here and couple of days there. We were applying the ointment and changing the dressing on his tail regularly, but it didn’t help much. The wound didn’t heal and he had lost all the hair on his tail. But he was happy. He was very playful and was engaging us a lot with his acts. Lina took him to the vet and he suggested using the medicine for few more days. He also said that if it wouldn’t improve we would have to remove his tail. We waited few more days, the situation did not get better and the wound was spreading up the tail to the body.

One day, Lina said she was going to take him to the vet to get him examined again. That was early spring, sunny clear afternoon. We were waiting for her to come back from the vet. We saw her parking her car and I went to her. Her looks were sad. She said “guess what happened”. I didn’t say anything. She said “he had his tail removed” and I could see tears in her eyes. She took him out of the basket and I can never forget his looks at that time. Poor kitty was crying just like how we’d do and was moaning from pain. He had such a gorgeous, long tail and all of it was amputated except one and half inches tail with a bandage around. He had about one and half foot long tail before. He was so cute and playful. We were very sad to see him crying like that. Lina had him in her house for about a week. He didn’t eat or play well. He was just lying quiet. Slowly he recovered and came back to his full energy.

We knew that Lina was going through some tough times and we offered her to pay for all the vet’s expenses. We didn’t think that it was an expense; we just wanted to do it.

This is how it all started and once he recovered, he was spending more time in our house. He is the little prince in our house, unlike Lina’s where he had to compete with two other cats for attention. Lina also understood that we liked him a lot and offered us to adopt him. We wouldn’t have gotten him if it wasn’t for Lina. She also taught us how to take care of this beautiful, playful, little darling. We always thank her for all her help.

Lot of things have happened during the past one year. Now we understand each other’s language. He mews differently for different reasons. I can now understand whether he is asking for more food or for going out or for playing with him. He is also the same way. He can understand whether we are talking about him or talking to him. Which means the communication gap is not there any more between us. More than anything, we love him dearly and he is now a part of the family.

Kittaya on the Deck

Kittaya Ready to Pounce

Kittaya in Evening Light

Kittaya in Deep Sleep

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