This week, various Internet groups observe "Kitten Day."
Did anyone need another reason to celebrate kittens? Don't they do a good enough job of celebrating themselves?
Today was also the first day when even the Cat Sanctuary, back in the cool green woods, logged 90-degree heat and 90-percent humidity.
If anyone felt inclined to celebrate anything, they celebrated by drinking extra water and staying deep in the cellar. During the transfer of duties the cats reclaimed the cellar from Dasher Possum and installed Drab in a burrow in the orchard.
There is still a lot of poisonous vapor hanging in the motionless air. Dora the Explorer had an opportunity to spend most of the night outdoors with her very devoted aunt Silver. She nonverbally said she liked staying out like a grown-up cat, but blood was dripping out the corner of her eye. ""Why is everyone looking so gloomy today?" she said. "It's only my stupid sinuses draining as usual. I can see! I can bounce and pounce like a normal kitten."
"It's good to see you're feeling bouncy," I said, "but I don't think you are a normal kitten. Over and above your chemical sensitivity, I think you may also have worms. Your stomach looks stuffed and puffed even when you've not been eating, and you're still growing very slowly. You're hardly half the size of Diego."
"Every kitten I've ever seen is smaller than Diego," Dora nonverbally said. "Anyway, I am his loyal sister. The last time you tried picking out cinnamon vines around the hibiscus bush, Diego decided to defend the vines from you. Now Diego is lolling under the porch and I say you shall not pull up his cinnamon vines."
"And I say you shall roll down the hill," I said, picking out vines with one hand and rolling Dora over with the other hand.
"Everybody is bigger than I am now," said Dora calmly, "but one day I shall rule with an iron paw! Why do you pull up cinnamon vines?"
"To stop them pulling down the Rose of Sharon of course," I said. "It's about the only flower in the not-a-lawn you lot haven't pulled down."
"We like to bend it over, let it spring back, and see if anything interesting flies out," Dora explained. "Once a cicada fell out. That was fun! We keep hoping for another cicada but, so far, all we've found are hibiscus leaf caterpillars."
"Shaking them out is good," I said. "Summer is almost over! Hear the katydids up in the orchard!"
"Does 'summer is almost over' mean the weather will be cooler again?"
"Yes," I said, "and on a day like this one that's about the best news I can think of."
"Kittens like it warm," Dora nonverbally reminded me, "although too much is too much of anything."
"Some good news especially for you," I said, "is that we have pepitas. You are going to have pepitas in chicken broth tonight. And if the e-mail is working, I am going to e-mail the vet about medicine to get rid of any worms that remain after you've eaten the pepitas."
A kitten is a very small animal. In a state of nature the odds are against its surviving. Even if it lives with humans its prospects for the first year are still touch-and-go. If it were a more rational creature, a kitten might not find so much fun in life. But it's a baby, full of growth hormones and life energy, and it always seems to be having fun, in one way or another. Pulling down flowers...chasing its siblings...throwing a twig in the air and catching it...pulling a toy to pieces...curling up against you for a nap....
Everybody really needs a kitten or a puppy in their life. Unfortunately some kittens and puppies are born in the custody of people who do not know this. Here are some very adorable and adoptable kittens. They need homes to bring fun and silliness and life energy into. Please share their photos and links with anyone you know who might know someone who needs a kitten.
Next week we'll look at puppies.
Zipcode 10101: Sylvie & Arthur from New York City
If you don't see the picture, click the link. Some piece of the local Internet was fried in last week's storm and it's taken three days just to get three Petfinder pages opened. It's too hot for me to keep trying to paste in pictures and waiting to see if they've pasted properly. I think we need a law that web sites have to paste things in when we type CTRL-V or else pay a fine for wasting our time, but meanwhile, you'll see the picture I had in mind, and one more, at the link.
This matched pair of siblings do everything together and must be adopted together. They are true "Jellicle Cats"...
"Jellicle Cats are white and black,
Jellicle Cats (as I said) are small,
Jellicles jump like a jumping-jack..."
Black kittens with some white below are stereotypically bouncy and playful, clever, affectionate, and loyal to their humans. It's too early to say much about Sylvie and Arthur except that they were born in March, are just old enough to be on their own, and may act clingy or regressive for the first day or two as they settle in. They'll grow up fast.
Zipcode 20202: Dakota from DC
Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/dakota-71887479/dc/washington/lailas-legacy-animal-rescue-dc31/
Two sisters have web pages of their own. Dakota won the cute photo prize, no contest. Click on her web link if you're not seeing another adorable Jellicle Cat type face. Dakota has patches of black fur, white fur, and a heather mix that manages not to fade to gray. Spring kittens, the sisters spend lots of time playing, either wrestling, chasing each other, or snuggling up together for a nap. They have been in a "foster home" with other cats and dogs, and get along with the other animals while giving most of their attention to each other and their humans.
It's nice that in English "Dakota" also means a place and/or a car, because the people who call themselves Dakota think it's ridiculous for an individual name. It's a collective form. It's like being called "Frenchmen" instead of "Francis," or "Americans" instead of "Georgia." If a human named Dakota learned to speak the Dakota language, person would want a different name. But in English we can think of it as more like being called "Dallas" or "Brittany."
Zipcode 30303: George & Miffy from Atlanta
His web page:https://www.petfinder.com/cat/george-bonded-w-miffy-72275802/ga/atlanta/little-lives-animal-rescue-ga1105/
They have two separate web pages for one story. These siblings were rescued from an abusive human when they were tiny. They have been "declawed." They must be total indoor pets. The good news is that they've been in a more humane foster home and have learned to enjoy being indoor pets. They play together when they're left alone, squeak for attention when their human comes in, snuggle up and purr themselves to sleep. Black and white cats are sometimes stereotyped as the friendliest, purriest, cuddliest color type and George and Miffy seem to have been consistently encouraged to act the perfect stereotype. They must be adopted together.
No mention was made of whether these "declawed" kittens have lingering pains in their paws, but one shelter did say that they can't guarantee cats being housebroken. Nearly all cats naturally housebreak themselves whether they ever come inside the house or not. They don't like filth either. The question is whether they prefer a sand pit, a litter box, to wrap everything messy in a shopping bag, or to straddle a toilet seat and get rid of waste material the way humans do. However, about this time a few summers ago, our Silver cat's siblings were adopted at a very early age. I advised against it, but the adopters insisted that the kittens were needed to cheer up an eighty-year-old cancer patient who had no time to wait. So the kittens found themselves in a new place about fifty miles from their home, and although they already knew that Serena and I did not want to look at the evidence that they had learned how to excrete all by themselves, they apparently thought the patient needed to see that. Maybe they didn't like a commercial litter box. Maybe they were hoping that if they misbehaved they'd be sent home. The good news is that kittens don't like a dirty environment, so the "See what I can do!" phase rarely lasts more than 24 hours. The more promptly a litter box is scooped, the better they will like using it.
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