Coming Unmoored

And while I’m at it, here’s the journal entry on how Rumi came to enter my life…

9/18/07

So I went to check out the Balinese breeder on Sunday afternoon and, naturally, I returned home with a kitten. (Duh.)

He started off as the geekiest, most serious little kitten I’ve ever met. I’m not exactly sure why we bonded other than he looked up at me with the biggest pair of blue eyes in absolute, abject horror at his situation. I was pretty much feeling the same way about the whole thing. I think we bonded over the feeling of: “Holy sh-t. How did we end up here??”

So much for my theory that breeders produce healthier, better socialized kittens. This lady definitely qualified as the Crazy Cat Lady with w-a-y too many damn cats. She’s an MD and somehow I expected better than that.

Her place is way out by the Saguaro National Monument. Apparently this was so she could build the “cat house” of her dreams without her neighbors getting upset. I never actually saw the cat house where the un-neutered males were. I suspect that’s a blessing in disguise.

The main house literally has an airlock configuration with two doors that will not open simultaneously. This is to keep the waves of cats INSIDE the house. And it really was an ocean of cats. You couldn’t move without currents of creatures drifting and wending past your legs.

In contrast, the family room was a forest of 7′ scratching posts all ripe with kitties that dropped to the ground at random intervals.

The place was a complete, feline madhouse. When the wrong cat drifted into the wrong 3 foot x 3 foot invisible grid of territory much yowling and hissing would ensue until equilibrium was restored.

I had driven from Sierra Vista and made the mistake of asking if I could use a restroom. There were empty litter boxes stacked up from floor to ceiling along the wall with the bathtub. As far as I could tell that was the only bathroom in the house. God knows where she bathes.

One of the kittens she tried to introduce me to was completely feral. Picture someone taking the Tasmanian Devil and dropping it without warning into your lap and you pretty much have the scene. The kitten took a good chunk out of my hand before I could get out of the way. I’ve been disinfecting the bite several times a day and popping antibiotics at home because the kitten hasn’t had her full set of immunizations yet. If I go to the doctors, they will have to report it. That means at least the kitten, and possibly several others would have to be quarantined to confirm she doesn’t have rabies. So far so good and no infection.

The little boy I bonded with initially didn’t want to be handled as well. But then he realized my lap was a relative point of calm in the sea of chaos, hunkered down, and didn’t want to leave. So he sat there hiding, nothing more than batwing ears and wide blue eyes showing in my lap, while I quietly dripped blood from my bite onto the tile floor.

If all that wasn’t enough of a tip-off that I probably should have walked, the breeder also offered to sell me the little boy for a lot less than I was expecting her to ask. But, at that point, I just wanted to get both me and him out of there. Plus, I figured it could be the sorry-my-innocent-looking-kitten-just-took-a-hunk-out-of-your-hand discount.

My kitten didn’t so much as squeak in the cat carrier on the ride home. Either he was grateful just to be getting the hell out of there or he was so shell-shocked he didn’t know what to think.

He’s definitely been the most quiet, stoic little kitten I’ve ever met. My experience has been that, normally, when you put a collar on a cat for the first time there’s major snit fits and somersaults of doom. Humans are supposed to know there’s nothing worse for their karma than trying to put a collar on a cat. With this little guy it was: “Oh. OK. Cool. A collar with a bell. That’s kinda neat.”

My kitten quietly peers at his surroundings like a wizened little old man with occasional breaks for massive, limpet love-attacks for me who, after much contemplation, he’s deigned to designate as His Human. Which is why he ended up getting named “Rumi”.

I’m not exactly sure what’s happening but his personality transforms a little in the middle of each night.

The first night started off with him wanting to do nothing but hide under the bed… until about 3 AM when, for some unexplained reason, I suddenly became His Human. At that point his place to be was smack in the middle of my chest wedged between my breasts. Then commenced the 1-hour schedule of being woken to perform the Ritual Adoration of the Cat. I swear the routine is more stringent than a Catholic Monastery. Three days into the schedule, now, I’m starting to have some vague appreciation of what it must be like for a mother with a newborn.

After the second night Rumi started to make throaty burrish noises that may, at some point, after much practice, actually morph into something resembling a “meow”. That and, nestled in bed yesterday morning, I got him to reluctantly admit the garishly-colored cat teaser I bought might have vague possibilities for entertainment. This is also when I discovered my kitten appears to be left-handed. He’s weird enough in every other dimension that I can’t say this really surprises me.

I’m not sure what the heck happened last night but I was woken around 1 AM with the kitten plopping the cat teaser on my chest saying: “OK. Explain to me how this thing works again.” I was foolish enough to comply. Not only did he decide the toy was pretty cool but he apparently felt it was time to make up for 12 weeks of never having played before in a single night. I think I got about 30 minutes of sleep after that. It’s now 6 AM he’s still trying to coax me to keep going with a pugnacious resolve that eerily resembles the coach from Rocky.

The reason why I haven’t written about the kitten before now is this… It took me about a day to realize but he came home with an upper respiratory and eye infection. I’ve seen kittens with infections go south really quickly and I’m scared to death I could lose this little one, too. When my vet told me it was going to be three weeks before I could get him in to be seen, I called Tom’s wife, Debra, who just purchased Cimarron Animal Hospital.

They got me in right away and stocked me up on antibiotics and supplements to try with him. His eye is a little better this morning and he’s definitely got more energy (lucky me). But I’m watching him like a hawk.

Anyway, that’s what’s up on the kitty front at present. Be forewarned that with his eye infection my little philosopher cat currently looks like he’s been on the losing side of a barroom brawl.

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