I am a dog person.
My kids are 17, 16 and 14 and I have survived this long turning down pouty pleading faces, without giving in and getting a cat.
On the day before Halloween, my son walked into the house with this tiny orange kitten, claiming it climbed up his pants leg while he was taking the garbage out, and wouldn't let go.
This thing was soaked. Shivering. Crawling with fleas. His tiny nose and one eye was crusted over almost completely. Waaaay to little, skin and bones.
My heart broke. I STILL said no... But I told the kids we would fill his tiny belly, get him warm and clean and find out what meds he needed, and then, when he was healthy, we'd find him a forever home.
We gave him a can of tuna, and almost immediately had to start taking it away in increments because he ate it like he'd never eaten before.
When his tiny belly was finally full, the next on the agenda was a bath. Too little for flea meds, he got a bath in blue dawn every day for the next three weeks to get and keep those nasty things away from him. Because he was so tiny and was so cold for so long, baths meant being blow dried with the hair dryer and a nap on a bed with a heating pad until he was dry completely. We ordered kitten formula... He apparently was doing just fine with wet food, but the more time we spent with him the more I came to the conclusion that being sickly and the runt, mama pushed him away and I decided to supplement with the formula to make up for what he missed out on. He got meds immediately for his runny nose and eyes, and a week later, antibiotics. We also got ointment for his eye, which after getting all of the stuff cleaned off of it we realized was completely clouded over and permanently damaged. (The vet that helped us with him later confirmed that despite the clouding, he can see perfectly fine!)
Shortly after his first bath, I sent a photo of the tiny, sickly kitten to my daughter, captioning it "well, this happened."
She replied with a photo of him in her arms, a week prior. I had been duped.
The kids had found this kitten, and I'd said "no" so many times they were trying their damnedest to care for him themselves, keeping him with old towels in a discarded dryer in the barn. (This explains why our tuna was disappearing.) They were just biding their time and trying to keep him safe and warm until they thought I was in a good enough mood to say yes, apparently.
I believe it was the third day, watching him play with the dozen new kitty toys after waking up sleepily in his new cat bed with his own cozy blanket that I realized, he wasn't going to any forever home but this one.
Jack (named for Jack o lantern, since he moved in on the day before Halloween) is now about seventeen weeks old. He has gotten so big and healthy that sometimes it's hard to remember that he showed up on our doorstep at death's door. He is fifty percent our wild child, so crazy that I roll my eyes and wonder how in the hell I, the dog person, got into this mess. The other fifty percent is the most affectionate cat I've ever seen in my life. I can't sit at the table without him perched on my shoulder like a parrot. When I come home from work he runs up and tries to run up my pant leg and meows until I pick him up. The second I let him out of my son's room in the morning, he's my shadow, has to literally be in my arms while I make my coffee and work lunch and get ready for work.
While he purrs. I don't know if it was because he physically couldn't with his ailments when he first arrived or if it just took him a while before he was comfortable and felt safe enough, but the first couple of weeks he didn't purr at all. Now, if you just LOOK at Jack, he starts purring, so loud that you can literally hear it on the other side of the room.
Now, I will admit, in his crazy moods I have threatened to send him back to the dryer. If he understood Human he would laugh at us, because he knows as well as I do that this kitten will be loved and spoiled and safe as long as he lives.
And this, folks, is how I was coerced into being a dog person AND a cat person.
MILLSBORO, DE
