What would you do if you stumbled out of bed one morning and found this sleeping kitten, abandoned by its mother, in a damp and worm-filled dirt patch in your backyard?Would you immediately freak out and pace around and startle the kitten and cause it to cry out in the tiniest kitten voice you've ever heard? Does each little wail stab away at your heart while you scramble around searching for a blanket to lay it in?
When it settles down and goes back to sleep in the little blanket in your living room, do you then drive to the nearby Safeway and buy a gallon of milk and also five kinds of baby formula just in case the milk is too harsh? And when you rush back to your house and scoop up the kitten and tear open the milk jug with your one free hand, do you think to go to the Internet just to make sure it's cool to feed a newborn kitten human food?
What do you do when you find out that no, it's not cool, YOU IDIOT, you need to feed it cat food, because human food will give it digestive problems and probably diarrhea?
Do you go to PETCO and roam around for ten minutes because damn that place is huge and they've only got one crabby associate manning the whole joint that early in the morning, a woman who's not going to help you, she's not even going to look at you, especially with that panicked look in your eyes? So when finally, all on your frazzled own, you find a teeny section of the store stocked with kitten care products, do you at that point get equally crabby because why is a good 2/3 of Petco dedicated to dogs? What do they have against cats? Doesn't PETCO know you need stuff for your cat?
Would you suddenly get distracted by all the lovely colorful cat toys, including a little chew mouse like the kind in the Garfield comics? Would you coo at them all and rush to the cashier to purchase the chew mouse, giddy at the thought of your kitten playing with the toy? Would you only think to go back and buy kitten formula to feed your starving abandoned kitten when you're already out of PETCO and about to get into your car?
When you rush into your house for the second time, do you spend ten minutes mixing the formula exactly as directed: measure two teaspoons of the powder, mix it with water until it is a fine paste, mix in more water until it is the consistency of milk? And when you wonder what next, do you use your awesome snap judgment and pour it into the tiniest saucer you can find in your cupboard?
How do you then feel when you wait and wait for your kitten to drink the formula, but all it can do is claw at the old blue blanket you've placed under it, crying and crying its little kitten cries? Do you start sweating when you dab your finger into the formula and bring it up to its mouth, but it just cries even more, and all you can do is pat it and try to keep it warm in your palm, and beg it to eat? When the kitten's wailing just about kills you, do you finally give up on feeding it for now and lay it in your lap while you go back on the Internet so that the Internet can tell you why your kitten won't eat?
How do you deal with the despair and the utter frustration you feel when the Internet tells you that when a kitten is that young and when it is abandoned by its mother before it has been weaned, it doesn't know how to eat from a saucer YOU IDIOT?
You have to hold it this way, see, and you have to feed it from a bottle.
Horse shit!
What do you do next? I will tell you what you do next.
You go back to Safeway and buy a set of baby bottles -- you decide to pay the 2 extra dollars to upgrade to the set with multi-colored nipples -- and return to your kitten only to find that the bottle is way too big for your baby cat, and oh my god Erica you've got to get a grip, you've got to step back and think clearly because you are getting exhausted and gas is five bucks a gallon and your kitten still hasn't had any food.
You suck it up and decide you have to go back to PETCO to get a special kitten bottle, but god, PETCO is so far away, and Safeway is so much closer, so you decide to ask the Internet if there's something you might be able to purchase from a grocery store that might serve the same purpose, and huzzah the Internet says YES! You can use an eye-dropper to feed your baby kitten.
So you go back to Safeway for the third time and purchase an eyedropper, and you come back to your kitten and hold it the way the Internet told you to hold it. You insert the eyedropper into its mouth and it feels the formula on its tongue, and boy is it terrified. The kitten turns its head wildly and refuses to take more of the formula, and you can't blame it because that stuff is nasty, and after ten minutes of this futile effort you are stumped and defeated.
So you give up on the whole sustenance thing, and all you can do is pat it and say stupid baby things at it: "I'm so sorry, little baby, I'm so sorry you don't have a mama anymore, and I'm so sorry I'm not very good at this." It goes to sleep after a little while, and you wonder, what next? Your last pet was a cactus and all you had to do was water it once every few months, and you couldn't even handle that.
You spend the next two hours thinking about what it means to be brought into the world, to be alive, to be nurtured, to be loved. You pat the kitten, you dab at the formula with your finger and try to get it to eat, you give up. Over and over you do this. But by now the kitten has warmed up to you: it nestles its tiny warm body against your hand, it digs its claws into your flesh but you hardly feel anything because its claws are so small, and at this point you are convinced that you are numb to pain.
But finally, when you least expect it, your little kitten suddenly seems to learn that the stuff you're trying to give it might fix that gnawing pain in its stomach. You are overwhelmed by the pure and absolute joy that fills you when it licks your finger for the first time, then again, and again, and again, and finally takes to the little eyedropper. You let it have as much formula as it wants, and it falls asleep soon after, a little ball of scraggly black fur curled at the softest corner of that old blue blanket.
You watch that little kitten sleep, and feel like someone has given you all the love in the world.
