Anne has wanted a kitten for some years. In January she came up with a plan - clean our existing litter boxes daily for a month, and then she could get her own furry baby. We worked through a slightly more thorough plan, and we did help her quite a bit with the boxes. It is not easy for her to do this task on a number of levels.
Last week, in advance of the 8th birthday (tomorrow), I started checking three humane societies compulsively, even in the middle of the night. Seattle Humane posts pictures of their available animals, and when one you want pops up, you have to be one of the first couple inquiries to have any hope. King County Regional schedules appointments a week in advance based upon expected availability of the type of animal you are interested in. And Kitsap schedules them two days in advance, also by expected availability, with the scheduling window opening at midnight. Thursday when I finished teaching I checked the sites again, and Kitsap had a sudden opening the following afternoon at 2:00, due to a cancellation. I scheduled us and emailed the adoption application. I also asked if anyone in our Buy Nothing group had a spare litter box sitting unused.
Friday, I loaded up my two girls, a plethora of snacks, the smallest cat carrier, and warm clothes since the majority of the appointment would be outdoors due to Covid. We popped over to a neighbor's house and retrieved the unused litter box from her front step and drove the nearly hour-and-a-half over to Silverdale.
They had two kittens available, and Anne was enamored of the sleek black fellow. She told me in the car on the way there that she wanted to pick a black kitten as Black people and black cats are not always treated as well and she wanted to give one a chance. Also, she likes space and black holes and dark matter and planets, and NASA can take you to all of them.
NASA, her darling new baby, is about 5 months old and was born in a feral colony on Kauai. He was taken into a feral rescue program there in February and treated to his first round of vaccinations and his neuter surgery. When that group of cats was flown across the Pacific to Seattle, it turns out that one other kitten on the transport tested positive for feline leukemia, so he had to be quarantined with a foster family for two weeks. Then he was brought into the cattery at Kitsap. And now he's here in our wild and chaotic little house with three little kids and three older cats.
Anne has been sleeping on my floor so she can be with him at night. (We don't have a way right now for him to access her top bunk. On his second night here, Black Bean broke into our room in the night and NASA broke out. We tried to get everyone back to their designated zones, but they did it again, so we just let them work it out. I heard NASA playing the living room spinnet (it was a different tune than the other cats play) and I heard some rumbly growls from Nutmeg, but no more drama. When I got up the following morning Nutmeg was sleeping on my bed and NASA was running around the living room playing with toys. He has been through quite a lot, poor little guy, and he is not completely at home here yet. He has some great hiding places in my room (inside my box spring and behind the clothes hanging over the dresser in the closet) and is very purry and affectionate (and sharply playful) in the night. It has been much smoother and less stressful than I had imagined adding him to our family, and we are all glad/indifferent that he is here.
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