My Blissful Sweetie – Part Cat, Part Squirrel

When I first heard of Kami, she was a tiny tortoiseshell kitten, less than two months old. Somebody dumped her on the street (sadly, the habit of dumping unwanted kittens is becoming quite common) and a nice family picked her up, although they couldn’t give her a

permanent home. She needed to be adopted urgently. Enchanted by her cute face, I didn’t hesitate for a second. After all, everyone knows that tortoiseshell cats are good luck charms!

Out of a couple of dozen new kitties I’ve taken in this year,

Kami wasn’t the most endangered by any means, it’s just that her future seemed rather uncertain. She had been taken care of temporarily, but for how long? Everyone thought she would be adopted quickly, she was extraordinarily cute and unique looking, but I could

tell that tortie kittens are not the most popular over here. Her photos were getting a lot of “awws” and “so cute” but no one had shown any real interest in adopting her for as long as I followed her story. If I hadn’t taken her in she might have been adopted, but also, she

might not ever have become someone’s beloved pet, chances were equal. As the wise man once wrote, counterfactual conditionals are always true, because the premise is false. What would have happened if she had, if I hadn’t, we simply don’t know.

This year’s kitten season has been plentiful, bringing an abundance of charming kittens vying for new homes. Unfortunately, there just aren’t enough adopters for all of these kitties in need. Resources are limited; cat shelters and foster

families can only take in as many kitties as they have room and money for. Some kittens will be fortunate enough to find a loving home in time and the others will be left on their own to face a hard life on the streets, it’s just a matter of luck. Cute looks and friendly

behavior mean nothing when there are so many homeless and unwanted kittens waiting to get adopted. Cat lovers are usually melting, looking into these fluffy faces, but foster families are way too few and far between.

Kami arrived at my

shelter in June, a charming little girl that was playful, active and full of life from the beginning. She’s been growing very fast and becoming more affectionate and more mischievous with every passing day. She quickly discovered how to escape

through the chain link fence and you could tell she very much enjoyed running around. She was a naughty, fun loving kitty, disarmingly cute and spoiled rotten.

As time went by, Kami’s appearance has changed a lot. She’s not a kitten

anymore, her tail is getting fluffy and her hair is silky and smooth. After several break-out attempts she seems to have reconciled with the idea of staying inside the fenced area, so she gave up on wiggling out of the shelter. She still hasn’t decided whether to be an indoor or an outdoor kitty, so she takes the best of both worlds and keeps going out into the yard and coming back to the house a hundred times a day.

Even though this little cutie is full of sparkling energy, her health has always been rather delicate. She’s prone to unexplainable fever, she gets sick for no apparent reason and I even get the impression that her normal body temperature is higher than usual. A couple of weeks ago she was diagnosed with bronchitis and bounced back to health only to get sick again a few days later. Maybe she’ll become tougher when she’s fully grown up, but for now I must keep a constant eye on her.

There’s nothing special or unique about Kami’s story. She came to me as just one of many tiny unwanted kittens looking for a home and only later did her affectionate and funny nature shine through. She is now safe, secure and loved and it’s hard to imagine that anyone could ever consider her to be disposable and utterly unimportant.

It’s said that many times when you no longer need something, someone else just might. This phrase is popular and widely spread, it proved to be true numerous times although I’ve never thought it could or should apply to unwanted pets. Little Kami, with her innocent face and a squirrel-like tail, is living proof that I was wrong.