Oct 13 2008
Hospitality for cats
Warning: This post contains images of super-cute cats, but no substantial thoughts on hospitality.
Last Tuesday I was working on taming a neighborhood stray for my sister:
I lured them to the porch with undesired leftovers, and watching their enthusiasm, went back to the kitchen for more.
The day rolled past as I fell deeper into an infatuation with this kitty.
I intended to send these photos to Chris, subject line, “I’d like the scrappy black one, please.” We recently became cat-less, and the 14+ cats that our neighbors feed (but don’t spay, neuter, vaccinate, etc.) have been enticing!
But then I came home on Wednesday to find this:
Don’t worry, we found official kitten milk, warmed them up, and now they look like this:
Sed & Awk
I don’t know if we’ll keep them, but the fact that Chris named them on Day 2 is encouraging. And the deep need in which Sed bounded out of the bushes toward Chris that fateful afternoon is quite compelling. Then finding Awk is the next yard, soaking wet and covered in ants, was striking.
How is it that two tiny kittens’ need can evoke our own, even unconscious, need for distraction, relaxation, cuddling, care (giving and receiving) – for house guests that will hopefully turn into permanant family?
So, those are two baby kittens? Not related to the one that you became increasingly attached to over the day? I want to hear more about the names! Good luck, mom and dad!
yeah, not related to the older black kitten (and her sisters) that i’m coveting! well, they might be related – they’re all part of the neighbors’ gang… but i haven’t seen the kittens’ mom in a week!
anyone want to adopt a cat? all ages and colors available!
or does anyone know of a spaying/neutering service under $25/cat?
Ooh, I want the one in the top photo. It would match Tiyah (my recent cat acquisition) perfectly!
Also: Why the names Sed and Awk?
(And sorry Mom for that previous punctuation misstep.)
beware the lure of kittens. it wasn’t as fun as we thought it would be to take care of 4 kittens. it was great, but tiring too. maybe the help shelter would give a discount on spay/neuter if you did a large amount. i don’t know. or you could just do some of them. would be better than none. or you could fix the mama, ten adopt the kittens out with the understanding.strong encouragement that the next owners spay/neuter them. that way, you don’t have to pay for all of them. anyway, i think this is about hospitality, very much. welcoming creatures, no matter their species, is a sacred thing. animal companionship is not a silly thing. it can get out of hand, but so too can human companionship. for both cats and people it’s about finding the right amount of invitation and independence you give your guests. and don’t smother them. we still need to come see these kittens. so do you have like 5 now?
well, the mom wasn’t interested in us:-) she just left two of her babies to die, and still has at least one, that we know of.
but yes, i think we may try to round up all the neighborhood cats for a spay/neuter fest. it would be great to get a neuter-scooter to actually come to the neighborhood so it wouldn’t be so traumatic for the cats, but as far as i know, none has ever come to our neck of the woods.
oh, and Chris will have to answer the Sed and Awk question. they’re unix programming terms, or something.
Congrats on the new family additions! I assume they have passed beyond the houseguest stage… I assume that you’ve talked to the folks at HELP about their low cost spay/neuter program? If not, pls give them a call. They have in the past arranged for a Neuter Scooter presence in Richmond; I don’t know the details (Stephanie would remember if you can’t find out from HELP). Have you tried to talk to your neighbors about it? Maybe they would be willing to share costs.
And unless Chris has responded elsewhere re: the names: naming two kittens sed and awk is indeed a massive Unix geek joke. They are related command-line tools that are used mostly for altering text files. AWK (it’s actually an abbreviation of the names of its creators) is a programming language that was originally designed for recognizing patterns and responding to them; it has more general-purpose applications as well. SEd (for “Stream Editor”) can also be used to apply changes to files, usually line-by-line, based upon search-and-replace patterns. And that’s probably more than you ever needed to know…
Cute! Cute! Cute! But you guys need helping with naming. And as for spay/neuter services, call HELP The Animals at 962-6811 and make an appointment once they are over 3 months old. It’s pretty inexpensive (though it’s going to be a little over $25). Neuter Scooter hasn’t come to Richmond in a while, but you can go to their website at http://www.neuterscooter.org and see if they’ll be somewhere else in the area (still more than $25, unfortunately, but I don’t think you’re going to get it done that cheaply unless you do it yourselves, which I don’t recommend).