Rescue Cat

Today after I picked up the girls from school we rescued a cat from an animal clinic. The cat was found in a parking lot, lying in the sun, trying desperately to pull itself into the shade using only his front two paws. The vet clinic nursed it back to health and over time he regained full use of his back legs. They told me that the first bowel movement he had after coming to the clinic was nothing but bug carcases, which just broke my heart. Since then he has been living at the clinic and no one has adopted it because he was over a year old and most people want kittens. Now he is somewhere around 18 months. But he has the sweetest disposition, they told me, and he loves to sit in your lap and be petted, and he loves all the kids that bring in their animals for check-ups and shots.

We already have a cat, Frosty, and he is the snobbiest cat on the face of the planet. As long as I give him a can of cat food every morning at 7:10am he doesn't give a rip whether I live or die. He won't sit with you, won't let you pet him, nothing. Very unpersonable. All Frosty will do is be a pain in your ass (and my mother swears he taunts her dogs when she comes to visit but I've never witnessed that so I don't know). He's also pretty, but he's so pretty you want to pet him, you want to love on him, and he's all ABSOLUTELY NOT. So the fact that this cat was essentially a lap cat was appealing.

Well, let me tell you, we've been home from the clinic for around 6 hours and this stupid cat won't even come out of the cat kennel. He's just sitting in there with the door open, eyes as wide as plates, thinking "What the hell did I do to deserve this madness?" I got him out and he sat with me on the couch for about an hour, and I was thrilled, but it was almost like he was holding his breath the entire time. I mean, he hates us. I called the clinic and they said cats take a while to adjust and if he wasn't better by Monday to bring him back.

And the cat heard me tell the kids if he wouldn't come out on his own and adapt by Monday we'd have to take him back, because I'm afraid he'll die of sadness or something, so he's in there just biding his time, waiting for Monday to come, and Skylar crawled all the way in the kennel with him, and then got stuck, and that further traumatized everybody. We have not named him yet, because no one can agree, and Owen won't discuss any names other than Lightning McQueen, and nobody else wants that name, so he doesn't want any of their names, and so on and so on and right now Skylar is attempting to climb on top of the kennel and I think this cat is going to have a heart attack.

He's super cute though, even though the back half of his body is shaved, not to the skin or anything, but it's definitely shorter than the front half, because it was all matted. It's growing out and should catch up soon. He's all black except for his nose and his feet, and no, we are not naming him Socks or Boots because Ashlyn doesn't like the name Socks or Boots, she likes the name Mittens, and I'm not naming the cat Mittens because all I'm doing is trying to give it a name, not make it gay. He also has big, pretty eyes which we've seen a lot of because he's afraid to blink around us. I want so badly to smother this cat with love and make it delirious with happiness, but I'm not really sure he's going to let me. I'm going to keep trying though, so hopefully by this weekend I'll have a cat to sit on my lap and purr and help me balance my margarita glass while we watch some football. Oh good grief, I'm just kidding! I don't watch football!