Tuesday 18 November 2008

The issue of the cat

In summer, an orange kitten settled in grandma's garden. Recently, the cat (or, say, 85% of a cat) settled in the abandoned doghouse in the yard. The cat is orange, pretty and cuddly.
There's however an issue: the indoor cat two metres away separated by a door only. It means worms, fleas and nasty cat diseases two metres apart although the indoor cat has been vaccinated against the usual crap. And, upon a closer inspection, it was discovered that the orange cat is not a tom - most orange cats are toms - but a girl. Which promises six pretty kittens three times a year. I told my parents. Grandma is hardly able to find a vet and get the cat castrated so the issue had to be dealt with somehow. My stance is clear - people out there, castrate the damn cats unless you're breeders and your kitty has more blue blood than Queen Victoria. The world is full of homeless kittens if you need some and any shelter will happily let you foster a preggers cat so that you can have the joy of caring for the newborns.

My parents had an argument. Dad is a jaded economist and mom changed her ignorance in pragmatism. Mom claimed that she's pragmatic and her pragmatism calls for ignoring the cat because nobody invited her and it's not mom's problem so why should she take any pain to deal with the issue of the cat. Dad claimed that he is pragmatic, grandma adopted a cat, the cat is there, nothing could be done but the kittens can be prevented so let's do that. I'm a cat activist so I stuck to dad's pragmatism. Before the surgery, the cat has to have empty stomach which posed a logistic challenge. It's an outdoor cat so even if she didn't get anything from granny, she would find something elsewhere. There's no suitable place to lock her up in grandma's house. I did some planning with dad - I'll hunt for the cat, bring her to our house, we'll have her around overnight and take her to the vet in the morning.
I announced to mom that I'm taking the kitty carrier to bring the orange cat so that we can starve her for the surgery and that I fixed it with dad. she said that we're both the same crazy, he brings abandoned puppies, I bring abandoned cats and that she wants nothing to do with the cat and if we weren't hers, she'd kick us out of the house.
I thought the cat needed to be hunted. When I explained the matter to grandma, she went to the yard and.... called the cat and brought her. She didn't want to be in the carrier so I held her in my lap. The indoor cat didn't know whether to be offended by the intruder or whether to sit in my lap too (she's my baby) or whether to sniff around because she is extremely curious.

The current state of affairs is that the orange cat is in our laundry room, mom asked several times to get some rags there so that she doesn't have cold feet from the cold floor. Mom asked on how the things went at grandma's. When I said that the two cats will sleep in one basket before Christmas, she rolled her eyes and told me to check that the outdoor one doesn't have any fleas and whether the cat basket is enough for two.