Hurt Kitten

Calico is one of the common colorations for domestic cats. It's also the name of our newest kitten who happens to be of that coloration. My older brother found her a few weeks ago outside a 7/11. She followed him to his car and he decided that he had to take her home.

Our other cat, Mercy and her son, Faith didn’t take kindly to new arrival. We put the three of them together in the guest room to see if they would get along, and after a lot of hissing, growling, and a few warning swipes on the head, the new kitten had learned who was in charge and gained a wee bit of respect for their personal space.

Cali, as we had taken to calling her, was still a little rascal, though. She was extremely playful and would attack anything that moved, including her own tail. Sometimes she would scuffle with the other cats, but mostly they would just have a long, tense standoff followed by a quick chase between the furniture. Other times they would approach, sniff each others’ noses cautiously, and then carry on their own direction.

A few days ago we noticed that Cali was missing. It was a bit sad, but not really a surprise. Despite the fact that we live on the 20th floor of a condominium, we’ve lost cats before. Faith’s sisters, Grace and Joy, went missing many years ago, and Hope, another kitten that we’d taken in, had also vanished one day a while back.

Then yesterday our neighbors from seventeen floors beneath us came up for a game of poker and told us that they’d found a dirty kitten that looked exactly like Cali on their balcony about a half hour before they came over. They had given us a call, but we were all sleeping and couldn’t pick up the phone, so they called one of the guards who took the kitten away for them. I went down and asked where the guard where he had put the kitten. He showed me to a place near the outside parking, but Cali wasn’t there. I was a bit relieved because it meant that wherever she was, she was still in good enough condition to walk, but also quite disappointed because we had lost her again. I looked around for a bit before getting a drink and going home.

When I got home my sister suggested we go look for her one more time, so I did. My sister found Cali sitting underneath a parked car. She was all dirty and she stank really bad. She also had some shallow wounds on her limbs. We carried her back home, washed her, dried her, and got a box to take her to the vet in. Unfortunately, all the vets were closed on Sunday, but I took down their phone numbers and decided to check again the next day to see if they would be open.

After that I put Cali in the guest bathroom with the box, a towel, and some food and water. She wasn’t interested in the food. When I came back to check on her there was blood around her nose, so I was a bit concerned about internal bleeding, but there was nothing that could be done about that at that time so I just said a prayer and hoped for the best. When I made my last check-up with her before bed, Mercy popper her head around the doorframe. I guess she heard the mewing and her maternal instinct kicked in. Well, either that or her natural feline curiosity. Either way, I thought that her concern for the kitten was quite sweet.

When the next day rolled around we went to check if the vets were opened, but they weren’t. I guess that even though their signs said that they were open on public holidays, Merdeka Day was special.

So now she’s still in her little box in the bathroom. She hasn’t eaten or drank anything, but aside from being very tired and a bit cut up, she seems okay. We’re taking her to the vet tomorrow, hopefully she’ll be fixed up then.