We have adopted a cat - or rather, he has adopted us. C was playing outside when she heard a funny sound in the bushes along the edge of our property. She went to investigate - and came back with a tiny black-and-white kitten. He was hungry and skinny, and had obviously been abandoned. Not knowing if the landlord would let us have a cat (and at any rate he was too flea-ridden to come inside), we took him to Esther Honey, the vet/animal rescue centre.
They doused him with anti-flea stuff, and kept him overnight while we went to ask the landlord if we could have a moggy. To C's delight, she said yes - and so that, my friends, was that. Jasper the cat moved in.
He is a hoot of a thing and we have completely fall in love with him. His ears are too big for his head, and it looks like someone has dropped splotches of black paint on his back, but he is still cute, and very affectionate. Alarmingly so, sometimes, in that for some reason he wants to lovingly lick your face (yuk). It also seems that he thinks he is a dog - he follows us everywhere, sits as close to us as possible, eats everything (including spaghetti, taro leaves, eggplant, banana cake etc), comes to the beach, and plays with the four very large dogs next door.
It's funny watching him creep up on the chickens. There are always hens and roosters wandering about the property; he sneaks after them, crouches down ready to pounce, and you can see him thinking, "I would very much like to attack that thing, but by jove it's so much bigger than me!"It turns out Jasper and the kitten next door, Ginger, are from the same litter, and had originally belonged to someone who lived behind us, somewhere closer to the hills. People here often do not treat animals very well, they are often abandoned, and stray dogs are quite a problem. I have never seen so many three-legged dogs before in my life!
Actually, the vets at Esther Honey have been joking that they will give me a job, because I have rescued five kittens in two months. One was at a motorbike yard I visited when I was looking for a scooter. I had never seen such a skinny, mistreated, half-dead looking animal, couldn't bear to leave it so asked the guy if I could take it. Took it to Esther Honey and they did their best, but it died the following day.Another time, C and I were out for a bike ride, along with Naomi, the girl from next door. We came across three tiny kittens abandoned in a field. Took them home, then put them in a backpack and took them on the scooter to the rescue centre (although C wanted to adopt those ones as well!)
Jasper and Ginger play a lot together, and the other day C and Naomi gave them a bath in our bathroom basin, and shampooed them with anti-flea stuff. Memo to self: next time suggest it would be easier to bathe one kitten at a time not two at once.Afterwards they wrapped the poor moggies in towels and sat on one of the big rocks outside our house.
Apologies to anyone who doesn't like cats - that's all you're hearing about in this post!
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