Water: Drank a number of laps of water.
Food: Ate a third of an 85g can of Fancy Feast Turkey.

We took Leia home from the animal shelter today. She’s not yet officially ours–she needs to recover from her cold and then get spayed–but the technician at the shelter thought that Leia would do better in a home than in the sick bay at the shelter. Leia’s still sneezing, but she’s drinking water and eating food, and with the way she’s just taken to us and to her room, you’d think that she’s been here for a while.

So it turns out that she’s not shy or reserved after all. Instead of cowering underneath the bed, she’s reposing on the covers, purring and chirping like the contented cat she is. Both W- and I brought our laptops up to Leia’s room so that we could keep her company while she got to know us and her room, but it doesn’t look like she needs any adjustment time. She’s adopted us as her humans, and that’s that.

Oh, yeah, she’s found her forever home.

She still needs to follow her antibiotic regimen so that she can get over her cold and get ready for spaying. Daily medicine update to be posted starting tomorrow. W- is in charge of tomorrow morning’s dose. =)

W- and I are adopting a cat from the Toronto Animal Services shelter. Leia’s a medium-ish-haired black-and-white cat who’s somewhat shy. We’re going to bring her home on Wednesday, after she gets spayed, and we’ll take care of post-operative care.

It was so difficult to choose. I wanted to take them all! After we spent almost an entire afternoon looking at and playing with the various cats, we narrowed it down to a handful – all female cats around two years of age. Iggy was a brown-and-white tabby who purred constantly and loved rubbing her head against you. Sasha was a quiet cat with a classic tabby coat. Leia, the one we eventually chose, was a bit reserved, but used such a variety of sounds: high meows, soft mews, and chirps. And Angel, well, Angel was insane. ;) (Well, probably not clinically insane, but getting there!)

We ended up choosing Leia because she felt like the best fit. I joked that she’s probably like W- and me in cat form: fairly low-key (well, I’m like that when I’m not excited about something ;) ), with a slight build (some cats were huge!), and with a pretty big vocabulary we’re not afraid to use. ;)

I’ll post more pictures when we have her!

(c) 2008 Sacha Chua, Creative Commons Attribution CopyLeft License

She’s really not as sinister as this, but I think it’s a nice picture anyway. ;)

And just like that, we have a cat.

Last night, as I was worrying about my paperwork, I heard W- yell, “Sacha, would you like to pet a cat?” Cat-petting beats paperwork-worrying any day, and besides, I was mostly done.

There was a charcoal gray cat on our porch. It–she–had apparently followed W- and J- home, and was purring like a sports car engine while J- stroked her. She was too friendly to have been a feral cat, and her coat was too well-kept for her to have been out on her own for long. She had no collar, though.

She was a little skittish, noticeably tenser whenever she heard cars zoom past or whenever the screen door latched loudly. But she was friendly, and we eventually tempted her in with saucers of milk and mashed-up salmon.

After she licked the saucers clean, she stood by the door and we let her out. She sat on the porch steps, watching the cars go by. She also explored the flowerboxes. After a while, J- reported that she couldn’t see the cat. I put on my shoes and stepped outside to check if the cat had moved on, looking for her home. A shadow moved near the tree in front of our house, and then ran–ran!–up the stairs and back into the house. J- and I smiled when we saw how she was getting used to us.

Cold night, or food and warmth and attention? Must’ve been an easy choice.

As we watched her explore, we munched on the salmon-mayo sandwiches W- made from the rest of the can. She explored the entire house, rubbing her face against everything in order to mark it hers.

Definitely friendly and completely unafraid of humans. Looks like we have a cat.

The totally awesome Sandy Kemsley read my Twitter gave me a cat bed, a litter box and a few liners, and some cat treats. The cat took to the bed immediately and spent the rest of the afternoon comfortably ensconced in it. W- picked up some cat litter and food; the food met the cat’s approval, but the litter still hasn’t been used. (I hope that she’s either used to litter boxes, or–lucky!–maybe she’s toilet-trained!)

We’ve put up “Cat Found” posters around the area, but I hope we can keep her. I am temporarily calling her le chat gris, like the way I called my first cat Neko because I was studying Japanese. Maybe we can teach each other how to speak French.

Thank you for your comforting thoughts.

I was horrified to hear what happened to Ollie. It’s sad that people can do things like that. I cried and cried and cried, and J- and W- put their arms around me and comforted me. There was nothing I could have done to prevent it or to call him back, and there was nothing I could do to prevent that from happening to other animals in the future.

When the initial shock passed, I found myself faced with a decision: I could either let this close me up and discourage me from caring so much that I could get this hurt, or I could defy that and keep myself open. I realized that–at least for me–the only way to fight the darkness within the world and within ourselves is to blaze even brighter with light. The only way to deal with random acts of sickness is with kindness. The only way to deal with hate is to love more fiercely. The only way to face death is to live.

Ollie was a good cat, and I’m glad I had that time with him. You can read about the time my dad rescued this poor drenched little kitten off the street and our daring cat rescue when Ollie decided to go and get lost on the roof. It was more than just the adventures, though. Ollie taught me a lot about the kindness of my parents, Kathy, and the other people at home. That’s what I treasure most about him: that a rather dusty orange cat with an endless appetite for food, the most piteous kitten-like meow (really quite out of place on a tomcat), and a penchant for getting stuck (in the same place! sweet but not very smart – that meow certainly helped persuade us to keep rescuing him), could teach me more about people and love.

I am sad that people can do such things to a cat, but I will not let that eclipse the goodness of other people or the happy stories Ollie was part of. I’m happy I got to know Ollie.

(And I am trying very hard not to run off and adopt another stray cat.)

UPDATE: My mom said that Ollie might have been in an accident; no one knows. But it’s beautiful that a stray and fearful kitten could find in our house something to call home.

Hey, that worked. Good thing I still have some of my favorite sketches on my DS. Here’s the sketch I play back to myself whenever I miss my cat or feel uncreative:

[kml_flashembed movie=”/notebook/colors/cat.swf” width=”400″ height=”318″ /]

She very obligingly posed for me the last time I was in the Philippines. I miss my cat.

My Random Posts widget turned up a link to Another kitten who must not be named!, which told the story of how my parents adopted Ollie, another stray cat.
And of course there’s Neko, my somewhat psychotic but sweet-to-me cat.

I miss them. I rarely talk about the cats during my webcam chats with my family because there’s not much I can do. W- has asthma, so no kitties ever. =( So I content myself by watching cat videos on Cute Overload. It’s nice not dealing with kitty litter, but it’s not the same as feeling something purr as it nestles in your lap.

Here is my cat:

Scottish Folds have nothing on my cat. =)

I miss her. But I’m still glad I had a chance to rescue her from inside the walls, and I’m still glad that I woke up at odd hours to feed her, and I’m still glad that I got tremendously attached to her. And I really appreciate how my family’s still taking care of my cat even if she tears up all the furniture…

Random Emacs symbol: modula-2-mode – Command: This is a mode intended to support program development in Modula-2.