Kitten caboodle: the further adventures

I have a feeling I know who’s going to adopt this tiny morsel of a kitty… I think it’s that shaggy guy in the mirror!

I took the kitty to see my sister-in-law on Memorial Day, since she has a mother cat who’s still nursing kittens. The idea was to see if the mother cat would let this little guy nurse; in the end she had to be hogtied…erm, sorry, persuaded to let the kitten nurse, but nurse he did (and he is a he – I seem to have correctly identified a cat’s gender for the first time in I don’t know how long). He was kept away from her kittens for a while, so he wouldn’t rub his “unusual” scent all over all of them and risk the entire litter being rejected because of that, but as of late last night, he’s apparently been accepted into the litter. He’s also being treated for a mild respiratory infection, which is getting off pretty easy considering that he came to us soaked to the bone.

And once he’s weaned again? Well…that’s the question. I’m not exactly chopped liver to the two kitties we already have, but they make it clear on a fairly routine basis that they’re “assigned” to other people: Oberon is Evan’s best buddy, and Olivia is my wife’s cat. I haven’t had a cat of my own since Othello died about a year ago, and maybe, just maybe, this one’s supposed to be mine. At least I allowed myself to start thinking that when I took over as “kitty daddy” on Monday morning and got a most unusual noise out of the kitten – a huge purr that you wouldn’t think that tiny body would have room for. I hadn’t been that happy in some time, laying there with a tiny kitten and his great big purr. Can I take care of this kitty and an active toddler at the same time?

Well…I dunno. With the kitten having been accepted into this litter, my wife seems to want to err on the side of “let him find a home with all the other kittens from that litter.” Maybe she’s right and I just fall in love with anything that has four legs way too easily. Maybe she was just in a weird mood yesterday (that gets my vote).

If I do bring the little guy back home, his name will probably be Nimitz, largely because of his amazing talent for working his way up to my shoulder and staying there. (Nimitz is the name of Honor Harrington’s loyal treecat in the series of novels by David Weber; he spends quite a bit of time perched on her shoulder, to the point where she has to have her uniform shoulders specially padded since his claws alone could easily kill somebody. Seems appropriate.) And also because he’s clearly a scrappy little survivor who can beat the odds into a dazed submission. It’d also be an easier name for Evan to get his tongue around than my usual habit of lumbering pets with Shakespearean character names – at the moment, he calls Oberon “Obi” and Olivia “Livvie”, or just refers to either one as “kitty!” A two-syllable name would be easier on the little guy, and he’d probably better learn that name too, since I have a feeling that the boy’s shoulder would wind up being voted the next best thing to my shoulder. 😆 Despite not being quite so mythic as Oberon or Othello, I think Nimitz would fit in nicely along our other pets’ names in the “My God, why did you call him that?” category.

Here’s hoping that we can bring the little guy home. I just have a feeling that it’s meant to be.