Tortie Wednesday, Too? Samantha Says Thank You

Here's the translated-from-nonverbal-communication Cat Sanctuary update, from Samantha:

This is Samantha. The calico kitten will be photographed when she's old enough to toddle out into the light, if she lives so long...there are no guarantees with kittens.

As my human mentioned yesterday, I am now a mother. Yes, although Burr is my best friend, that skinny, snobby, long-tailed cousin of his was the father of my babies. If my human prefers the way he looks, I don't. I was sad to lose three babies but, if I had to lose three of the four, I don't mind that they were the three who looked more like Tickle.

Our extra-long tails can actually be a nuisance, too, even if constantly curling them up off the ground is a trade-off for getting more use out of them in climbing and hunting. Old Heather once said one of her sisters got so tired of having a long tail with a kink in it that she chewed the end of her long tail off, and was content with a short tail, like my daughter's.

Will I get so close to my daughter that I'll want her to stay with me when she grows up? Will I want her to move out on her own? Will she even live to grow up? How would I know? I'm only one year old and I now realize that I don't know everything, yet, after all.

I am taking as good care of her as I can. She can't see anything yet but, whatever you may have been told about young kittens, she can hear. She can squeak for the human if I go out and leave her in the warm room while the human is there, and she can hear the human make human noises back at her. She'll go back to sleep if she was just squeaking to find out whether anyone was there, or squeak louder if she needs help. I was relieved that, when she squeaked because she'd got her foot stuck between the bars of my Safe Box, the human had enough sense to scoop her out. I would have done that myself if I hadn't been crunching up kibble outside.

For a while it really seemed that I'd broken through to the human and was working on something along with it, when we tried to get one of my kittens to live and breathe. Even though that kitten was only a fetus and never became a baby, and deep down I'd known that that was the case, for a few hours I really loved the human for trying.

Then she did the horridest, most disgusting thing...she took my Safe Box away from me, put it out in the yard, and left my poor little son's dead body in it. Out in the cold! To see what sort of hateful wild beast would come and eat him! In my box!!!

It was the other one of a kind of animal that was living here when I came. The old one was very old for its kind and, although it was a different, very stupid and nasty, kind of animal it seemed to think it was a sort of defective cat. Heather and the human used to treat it like a sort of defective cat. They didn't like when it would run into the house, but the human would give it treats to lure it out again rather than try to chase it or scare it. "Useful little thing" was what the human called it, or "Pally," by way of a name, because it tried to be our pal. In winter it lived mostly on our bodywastes, and what it could use its long, pointed snout to lick out of the cracks at the bottoms of food tins.

Pally's kind of animal aren't designed to live as long or hunt as well as cats. Their place in the world is to eat things that would make any other animal sick. The human often says, "Their short lifespans and weird metabolism allow them to absorb and neutralize toxins and disease-causing bacteria in the environment." I think that means that their eating our bodywastes keeps our sand cleaner.

Virginia Opossum photo donated to Wikipedia By Cody Pope - Wikipedia:User:Cody.pope, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1705724 .

Anyway there was another one, a new one, not as friendly as Pally, and that was what the human found in my box in the morning.

You can imagine how I felt! That filthy animal in my box! And then the human wanted me to stay in a little cramped cardboard box, with steep sides and a top that packed down tight, while she went into town and left that animal in MY BOX!!!

Anyway I didn't do her any permanent harm. I would never do that. I care for the hands that feed me but it's not the first time I have left a few marks on them, to teach that human a lesson. A cat has to look out for herself in this world.

But! When she came back from town, she came in a truck. Heather told me about trucks. Trucks sometimes stop and unload our human, or else draw our human out, and from inside trucks come food and supplies we can use, but some other cats Heather used to know were killed by running out and trying to make trucks stop and deliver good things.

This truck contained other humans who talked to mine. One of them was the very nastiest-smelling kind of human, the kind that go around with bits of burnt paper in their mouths so they always smell like smoke. They put my box in the truck with that other animal still in it. They brought out another box. It looked like one that belonged to my mother!

I've seen gray-topped or blue-topped models, but Amazon is featuring a purple-topped "Pet Taxi."

The other humans said that this box would break under the weight of a cat who didn't want to be in it, so they had left it out in the yard and thought about sending it to the landfill to burn, but if I needed a box to build a nest in I could have it.

It had bits of cut grass and gravel and insects and other people's scents and such stuck to it, including a trace of that stinky human's smoky odor, so it was nasty. The human wanted to leave it on the porch and do other things. I tolerated that for a few minutes, and then I politely redirected her attention to this new box.

She had some idea what to do with it. She went inside and got stuff to scrub all the dirt and most of the odors off. I stood and watched to make sure she scrubbed every crack and corner. She might have missed a spot if I hadn't politely pointed out spots she might have been about to miss. When she was finished the box still smelled nasty, but nasty like stuff humans use to scrub things rather than licking them with their own tongues, not like other cats' scents.

So now we have this new box, and although it's not big enough for me, it has no cracks for my daughter to get her feet stuck in. I would rather have spent this day in my own box if my human had to go into town, which I don't believe she really did. On the other hand I'm glad to have a safe place for my daughter.

Later the other humans came back again and brought back my box. It still smells like that nasty animal. It is still on the porch. I plan to make the human clean it for me when she comes home tonight.

Nevertheless it's nice to have a box where I can see out and see that I'm safe, indoors, alone with my daughter, while there's not enough direct light to shine in on her little face. I know it's better for babies not to be exposed to much direct light. The human was putting a scarf over the side of my box to shade my baby in the daytime. This is better.

Wherever those other humans have gone now, even the stinky one, I send them my thanks for giving my daughter a box of her own. One day she may need it. Heather told me that when humans give a cat something useful, such as food, they like for the cat to stop and rub her face against their hands. That usually sounds to me like a chance for some other cat to get at the food first. However, if those humans come back, maybe even the stinky one, I would rub my face against their hands! I am so glad that now my daughter and I each have a box of our own!

P.S. from P.K.: That's what Samantha thinks. I intend to find out, while Samantha is spending the nights snuggling up with her daughter, whether there are any raccoons in the neighborhood. But there's been no room for doubt that she likes that old broken "Pet Taxi" as much as I do! Since we have a carrying cage already, even less suitable for a kitten's nest than the working trap is, what do we care that this carrier box will no longer actually carry a cat? Thank you, local lurkers!