So... this is currently in our basement in the old rabbit cage:
Yeah... so... it looks like we've adopted a kitten. The kids found it under a bush across the street. It very obviously wasn't feral, but lost and terrified and WAY too young to be out alone. It took two days for the kids to catch it -- they were all panicking after the first failed attempt that something was going to eat it overnight, so when it appeared again the next day they were wild with relief. So they bribed it into the rabbit cage with some food and closed the door from a distance with a homemade rope Katie had cut out of extra fabric. (She is nothing if not resourceful.)
After its initial panic at being caught, the kitten calmed down quickly and has turned out to be super affectionate. When we brought the cage into the basement, it would cry every time we went upstairs and left it alone. It loved having company. I was afraid we weren't going to get any sleep that night. :)
On Saturday we took it to the vet to get it checked out. It had fleas, worms, and a nasty upper respiratory infection, but with treatment should be fine. We also learned it's a male. (Of course it is!)
We've decided to name it Soot Sprite, after a character from Miyazaki's
My Neighbor Totoro.
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| small, black, furry, with eyeballs... |
The reason we're keeping it isn't just due to Katie's Bambi Eyes. Barely a week ago, Katie and I were talking about how we'd love to get another pet, and how much she would love to have a cat in particular, but I was balking at adoption fees and breeder's charges. I mentioned that all the pets that we've had have come to us providentially when we were ready for them, with Katie's own gerbil Snowball the lone exception (he was an 8th birthday present). So I told Katie I believed that when we were meant to have another pet, it would just come to us. "But," says I to myself, I says, "it's not like a random cat is just going to walk into our yard and adopt us!"
*cue hysterical laughter*
However, in a sense I was right -- it didn't just walk into our yard -- we had to cross the street to get it. :) But when the kitten just appeared out of nowhere, I took that as a sign that it was meant to be ours.
So now it's living in the old rabbit cage until I can give it a bath, using a cardboard box and old gerbil shavings for a litter box (yes, it is litter trained already even) and baby bowls for feed bowls until I can do some proper shopping for it. Our neighbors gave us some cat food to tide us over until we were able to get it some real kitten food.
The neighborhood kids are constantly coming in to look at it -- they actually all worked together to capture it, spending hours climbing under bushes to try to coax it out, so it really belongs to all of them. We were just the only foolish adults who actually agreed to bring it into our house. :)
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At the same time that all this was going on, a huge white pigeon has also adopted us.
For the past couple days, it's been constantly hanging around our yard or on our roof. It kept Mr. Pickles company while he was cleaning out the roof gutters by sitting on the top rung of the ladder.
The thing is huge. And it's practically tame -- it will let you allllllllmost touch it before it flaps away a yard or two.
Where did these animals come from? The neighborhood mysteries deepen.
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This one is an honest-to-goodness wild animal:
We have lots of deer around, but they don't usually stay long enough to be caught on film. One of the girls just managed to get several shots of this lovely doe before it bounded off.
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Oh, and we have rats. I'm hoping Soot Sprite will turn out to be a good mouser.
