A ‘kitty’ Saturday

Friday night is a welcome night for most of us since we have the liberty of having a rather long sleep. Whether you wake up at 7 a.m., 8 a.m. or 10.00 a.m. it won’t make a huge difference since it is Saturday, and that is a holiday! This is the default rule for me as well. But, just imagine, you wake up on a Saturday morning to see new born kittens in your room! Especially when you don’t have any cats at home! Jeez! That’d be a shock! That’s what exactly happened to me today. Anyway, what started as a shock ended as a very touching experience and I thought I’d type it in.

Unfolding…

As some of you know, I am staying in a temporary place in Mt.Lavinia. I am on the top floor of a house and my room opens to the balcony. Over the last few days, I was noticing a white cat with few black spots lurking around the house. However, I did not think it was a big deal since there were anyway few cats around this place. But, I noticed that it was trying to get in to my room from time to time. Apart from that, whenever I open the bathroom door (which is across the balcony), it used to race in from wherever it was, and try to get in there. I thought it was a spoilt kitty and just made sure that it stays away from me (coz I don’t like cats :) ). Once I caught it in my room as well, and chased away. I was little annoyed coz no matter what I did, it was very reluctant to leave. This was like 2 days ago.

The morning shock…

Yesterday, like many Friday nights I snuggled in to my bed hoping to have a long night’s sleep. Everything went on fine, and I woke up around 9.45 a.m. Yes, I know. I am not proud of waking up that late :).

I was just booting up my systems, when I suddenly noticed a fluffy thing move over the far end of the bed. Aha! It was that cat again!!! It had come in through the window which I keep open at night. I was in such a rage and jumped off the bed. But, instantly I realized something. The cat looked rather skinny. Then things started to fit in like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

I realized this cat has actually been a pregnant cat, and the reason why it was trying to get in to confined spaces was to find a safe place to give birth to the kittens. With that deduction, the next thing that came to my mind was, “Oh lord!!! Did she lay the kittens in my room?!!”. But, things were rather quiet, and I thought maybe she just came in to find some food or something. However I saw that she was continuously mewing looking at me and was not going away for more than few feet away from my door.

Anyway, I thought “whatever!” and finished my morning chores and got back to my room. Just when I opened up my laptop and started to read some news, I started hearing a faint squealing from under the bed. It was the moment of truth! There were new born kittens in my room!!! A number of questions started to run through my head. “How many freaking kittens are there?”, “where exactly are they?”, “Gosh! Have they dirtied the place?” etc.

Compassion in action…

With all kinds of weird things whirling in my mind, I started clearing out things under the bed, expecting the worst. I pulled out things under my bed one by one and I constantly kept following the squealing to figure out where they have really ‘settled down’. There was one tall box on its side, in which my fan came. And there they were! I tried to see inside the box through the opening on the side, and mommy kitty was in the far end of that box.

Anyway my room is like 10’x15’ and living with a kitty family inside this is not going to work for me. So, I gently pulled the box out and pushed it over to the balcony, hoping to let them have that as their shelter. I put my stuff back under the bed and was waiting to see mamma kitty’s next move. Anyway she came out of the box in a while, and seemed to be looking for something. At one point it came up to me and started mewing looking at my face (like I understand ‘cat’ :P) . Probably since it did not get the answer from me, it ran off down the steps. Being inquisitive, I peeked in to the box to see how many kittens there are. Aha! There was one tiny little kitten like mouse which hadn’t even opened its eyes.

In a while mommy kitty came running up the steps. And guess what she was carrying in her mouth! Another kitten! Now the kitten count went up to 2. After settling them down in there, the mommy came out again and started saying gibberish to me. And it was very keen to get in to my room. So, I thought maybe it has another kitten and is trying to find it. And of course I knew that it would definitely find one if one was left in my room. So, it came in, went in to all corners of the room, but seemed to find nothing. Then with lost hope it went out again.

At this point I was rather touched since the mommy kitty was cleaning the kittens, making them warm and cozy and feeding them. Anyway now that they have a home, I left my place to do some things I had planned to do.

When I came back in the evening the first thing I did was to peek inside the box and see how they were doing. Just as I expected the kitty mommy was there while the two kittens were cuddling to her. Since night was coming and this is going to be the first night for the kittens, I pushed in an old piece of cloth I was having for them to use to keep warm. Prepared some milk and gave mommy kitty as well.

All’s well that ends well…

It was a weird start for a weekend. But, it was a pleasant change and it was nice to see the motherly love in the animal world. However, I must make sure all theses good treatments would not backfire, by the entire feline family trying to start treating me as their master. I have captured some moments of the experience and you can have a look at the photos ( and the video which I will be posting soon ).

Ah, before wrapping up I must say that one truth still holds despite what happened - I still hate cats! :)