Kitty Quest

Note : This is an old post which I half-wrote and then abandoned.

I like animals.

You would recognize this for the understatement it is, if you saw the virtual zoo of stuffed animals, I house in my apartment. At last count I had a donkey, a monkey, a giant bear, a giraffe, a cat, two dogs, a hippo, an elephant, a sea lion, a lion, a lamb, and a deer. As a natural progression of this fascination with soft, furry creatures, I decided to adopt a pet.

Ideally my first pet would have been a dog, a nice big one at that (Or not, because though I like the idea of having a big dog, its the small furry one's with hair falling all over their face, that reduce me to a puddle of mush). Dogs, however, come with a lot of responsibility, financial and otherwise, especially in this country. They have to be walked twice a day, unless you enjoy cleaning dog poo off your carpet. They need exercise, run up vet bills, and can't be left alone overnight. I'm not saying this is not how it should be, but its a huge commitment, one which I would love to make when I'm in a more settled situation. Enter simpler solution - Cat, and thus began the kitty quest.

I started off with considering adopting from a shelter. But I didn't want to rescue an animal and return it if things didn't work out. I spent weeks drooling over cute kittens and cats on craigslist waiting for a perfect older gentle cat to be put up for adoption, whose owners wouldn't mind taking him or her back if I decided to move and couldn't take him along. Quite a wish-list and one which was obviously impossible - why would anyone give away their cat only to take it back later. Anyways, I did contact a couple of people and while they were very interested in the beginning, they either changed their mind about giving up their pet or stopped responding. I was irritated by this at the time, but I now realize its perfectly natural to not want to part with your pet even though it seems the logical thing to do.

So back to shelter it was. In the course of my search, I had also realized that if I adopted an older cat, it would be not only difficult for her to adjust to the new situation, moving to India would probably end up being too much disruption for her. And if for some reason I had to find another home for her before I left, it would be so much more difficult.

So that made it a young cat from a shelter. How young? I first contacted someone for a 6 month old kitten. He had already been adopted, but the lady also mentioned that it would probably not be a good idea to adopt such a young cat with my work/commute schedule. Next up I found this beautiful tuxedo cat, about a year old. However, I was going to be of town for a couple of days and when I did get back, the tuxedo was still at the shelter, but the lady I had been talking to had this 9 month old cream and white (as she put it) kitty, whom the shelter folks had loved so much, they had sent him ahead of schedule. I decided to see this cat and she brought him over. He was sitting huddled up in his carrier but once he came out, he started purring loudly and wanted to climb on everyone's shoulders.

And that's how Kittu came home.

He's now been around for 10 months and I think he likes it here. He sleeps, eats cat food and cheese, purrs, stretches, grooms, runs around wildly, fetches paper balls, greets me at the door, snuggles and then sleeps some more. Apparently cats don't really miss their owners if they leave, but I sure would miss him, so its next stop India for both of us.