The Traveling Cat

lost and found

by Jeneen R. Garcia

to be published on November 19, 2005

 

 

Because this is supposed to come out on my birthday, I had started writing about something else entirely. And then SHE walked my way.

 

So there I was, taking a stroll after a solitary dinner. I was supposed to be hurrying home to write this column, but I had deliberately gone round the long way, in the hope of bumping into someone I knew. Instead, I bumped into her. She was shrieking on the sidewalk, too tiny to feed on anything but milk. As I am wont to do in these situations, I picked up the filthy ball of fur to return her to wherever her mother was. Problem was, no mother was to be found. Someone had dropped her there, a man on the sidewalk said. She would just die if I didn’t take her home, he said. What else was I supposed to do?

 

After a quick stop at a convenience store to buy powdered milk, I carried her home, quite appropriately, on top of my “Poetry for the Earth”, which I had been reading over dinner. I didn’t want to think about what I was getting into. Although I love animals and all things of nature, I’ve never had my own pet. Sure, I grew up in the company of cats, dogs, pigs, and other cute and not-so-cute creatures. I even have a baby picture of me lying in a hammock with a chick in my hands. But never have I had a creature to name and call my own.

 

How on earth could I provide a home to a baby when I myself didn’t have one? I rent a room. I eat out every night, work till late, and go home only to sleep. And I love to travel. I enjoy being out for almost a whole month on one trip after another.

 

On the other hand, how could I let this baby starve? She can’t even drink from the dish yet. She sniffs and splashes her head into it, because she’s too young to know what to do with it. I have to dip a piece of cotton in the milk (small enough to fit in her mouth, tied to the end of a paper clip with my cinnamon-flavored dental floss) so she can suck on it-- again and again until she falls asleep. It takes almost an hour to soak up half a dish. Obviously, I can’t leave her by herself, or she’ll go hungry.

 

The first morning, I decided to bring her to the office so I could observe her feeding habits during the day. I soon realized that this little kitty was used to sleeping out hunger. If I didn’t wake her up and feed her, she would sleep her way to death. So I took her to my lunch meeting the next day. Then to dinner with a friend at a restaurant. On Sunday, because I had to stay from 8 a.m. till mid-afternoon, I took her to church, feeding her at least four times throughout. She’s taken a car, a taxi, and a jeepney. For shorter trips, we walk, she riding on my shoulder.

 

My schedule has gone haywire. While I used to have a task set for every hour, now I can’t tell what time I can start working at night, because I can’t leave her till she’s fed and asleep. I’ve neglected my laundry and cleaning. Instead I spend my time bathing her and making sure the paper in her shoebox is clean. I’ve never spent so much time doing something for someone else continuously for this long. And without even a yaya to take my place. Good thing I was able to do most of my groceries before I found her.

 

Or before she found me. Somehow, I have a feeling she’s been moving towards me all these twenty-six years of my independent, self-centered life, stretching one scrawny leg at a time in front of her, right up to this moment where she sucks on a wet ball of cotton between my fingers, eyes closed, front paws wrapped tightly around my thumb as if her very existence depended on it. So this is how it feels to hold a life in your hand.

 

I was going to write about everything I had learned since I turned 25. But my thoughts keep drifting to the bus ride we’ll be taking down south this weekend, and if she’ll enjoy the plane ride the week after when we have to go to Laguna for a week-long meeting. One thing I know--if I had met her a year ago on that sidewalk I’d probably have walked away, because I would’ve been too scared to have my life turned upside down by someone who needs me as much as she does. Thankfully, some things, like love, we learn to do better with age.

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Postscript: I've named my baby Coal Ash Lee, a.k.a. Ashley, because she's dirty-white all over, except for her ears and tail and hind heels that look like they've been dipped in ash. Also, it's because we have a campaign against investments in more coal plants in the country that produce toxic coal ash, and we're pushing for investments instead in clean, renewable energy  

Thanks to my fellow feline ana for lending me her basket to take the place of the shoebox, and for serendipitously giving me cat food when she had no milk that first night. ashley loves eating it even if she has no teeth. And it's a quick substitute when i'm too busy to wait for her to suck all the milk.

Don't have time to post all the cute photos now. Watch out for them next week. Of course, being the traveling-shooting mommy that I am, all her moves are documented, milk in one hand, camera in the other  This digital camera definitely came at the right time.