KIT KIT

Our first experience with a week old kitten was Kit Kit. Yes! We were still new to the range of possible names of cats. We also followed it up with Kit 2, Kit3 etc. Now since we are professionals in the field we have let our imagination run wild naming them anything, from Jamelia to Delta.

Kit Kit’s eyes had not even opened when she first came in. Not only were we then cat ill-trained but also had four dogs living with us. Kit Kit’s mother had abandoned her litter and she was the only one in the pack who survived it thus far alone in the big bad world. We brought her in fearing she’ll meet the same fate of her siblings. Feeding such a young thing was our first task. We tried with a dropper initially. But the dropper being too big for the small mouth we switched to using a syringe instead. With the needle removed, one pulls up a little bit of milk in the syringe and gently yet firmly feeds the kitten drop by drop. It is a fool proof method, as experience has taught us. Animal care can be self taught with a little bit of determination.

We realized that baby kittens have their claws (very soft when young) perennially exposed, i.e. they have not yet learnt to retract their claws.

We learnt that they love to paddle, much like human babies while feeding. Kit Kit would paddle softly on the hands or the lap even when just happy. In fact Ma was her favorite paddle pillow every night.

We learnt that the colour of the eyes change from a dark grey/black to yellow (or green, light grey etc) once they grow up.

We learnt that cats love soft surfaces to pee on so one had to be prepared for certain consequences.

Over the course of a decade or so of keeping cats we have learnt many things. Most of them have been taught to us by Kit Kit.

Partial to the core, she had all the soft corners of her heart reserved for Baba. The minute he’d be heard at the gate she would quickly begin to preen herself. It was an odd display of dexterity and precision where all her facial hair would, by end of the task, be neatly in place. The second Baba would enter the room she’d shut her eyes and pretend to have been sleeping all the while. Displaying an I-give-a-damn-you’re-home attitude when nudged awake, Kit Kit was not one to be ignored, ever. She set the rules of the game. After the initial home-coming drama she would perch herself on Baba’s shoulder, across the neck like a warm fur coat, for the rest of the day. And thus Baba had to carry out the other tasks which could be considered ordinary in an ordinary circumstance, like, scratching one’s leg or simply straightening one’s spine.  This fur coat came with sharp claws and any acute angle that would likely throw her off balance would result in a digging deeper into human flesh, gently reminding the human that he was in fact not being very careful about the ‘responsibility’ on his shoulder.

In season time her eyes would get reduced to slits and have a terrifying look about them altogether. We learnt not to walk within claw reaching distance at those times. She was one cat who kept every human being in the family treading on eggshells on such occasions.

She had a poem dedicated to her… I’m a little tea pot. In her happier moods she would be made to enact it including the whistle and all. In her deep sleep if one went close enough and recited the poem she would flip her tail without betraying a hint of coming out of her meditation.

Kit Kit groomed us well. It was a rough training where all other forthcoming cats have paled in comparison when it comes to mood swings and madness.

The eldest of the cats today is her off-spring, Circuit. She isn’t like her mother but once in a while displays an unmistakable streak of Kit Kit, reminding us that she is very special indeed.