Stowaway

It took me a while to decide whether the impulse to get a kitten was just an aftershock of the Great Reconstruction. It seemed unfair to dangle another life form over the sucking crater of my gloom, especially a tiny cute one. I started having apocalyptic dreams in which I adopted children orphaned by the blast or the earthquake or the flood, and woke from these dreams feeling sharp emotional pangs of sympathy and loss instead of the philosophical dread that I normally feel when the city crumbles in my nightmares. I had an earlier opportunity to adopt, but as tempting as it was, I was still teetering on the edge of selling everything I owned and waking up the next day in Argentina, and was not yet in a position to be trusted with small things.

I discovered a new litter born around that time, and decided to wait seven weeks for one of those. Perhaps I would feel warmer inside, perhaps I would know a thing or two more about what was in the cards for the next week/month/year. I heard that there were orange ones in the new batch. Perhaps I could stop pulling out my hair and have some left for it to match.

I'm not better yet, not all the way, but I'm on my feet now and fighting with awesome surgical strikes. I can finally see all the holes in my boat now, instead of just despairing at the water rising past my ankles. I went to meet the new kitties the other day and learned all about them, which one was the sweetest and which one was the bounciest, which one was the sleepiest. I decided on the sixth (and last) born, who had to be revived after his birth lest he drown from the fluid in his lungs. His human parents tended to him all night, hoping he would gather enough strength to nurse as all the others were already heartily doing. In the end, he pulled through, and is now just as happy and spoiled rotten as his littermates, and will be coming home with me on the 13th, where he and I will learn to get along with ourselves and each other.

Here's a video of the kittens playing, filmed a few nights ago by my friend Jeff. Anyone who is interested in adopting, let me know and I'll put you in touch with him.