Kitty #2...

...Comes and goes. On Monday, while doing a little shopping in town, we stepped over a scrawny, calico kitten laying in the doorway to our favorite (and only) “café.” C and I commented on how it looked like it was on death’s door, and a moment later C said, “we could take it home with us!” My jaw hit the floor as I stared at her in disbelief.

“We could what???!!!”
“It has a long, straight tail!”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I bet she would turn into a pretty cat if we took her in.”

The café owner tossed her a fried fish head and we asked him about it. “I don’t know who’s it is or where it came from. Feel free to take it.” I still had not recovered from shock that C had suggested such a thing—she, who talks so much of her dislike of cats (one week later I am still in disbelief). I would never turn down such an offer, although uncharacteristically I was thinking, ugh, I’m not entirely sure I want to go through the whole kitty-training-and-reviving routine again. But if C is having a mercy moment with this pitiful creature, who am I to squelch that? And besides she probably isn’t serious, so I’ll just wait and see how far she goes. We actually went home with that cat.

We settled on the name Scudder, in honor of a former teammate who was notorious for picking up cats on death’s door (his grandpa calls him Scudder), but Pigeon was kind of her “pet” name because she sounded exactly like a pigeon cooing when she purred. After deworming her and cleaning up after her 11 bouts of diarrhea (most in the living room), we had to go back to camp for meetings, so we brought her along. She did fine overnight and with Butch, the camp cat (despite Butch’s unwelcoming viciousness), and fine throughout the following day, but when we were ready to head home, she was nowhere to be found. Not sure if she is alive or dead, but probably dead. She was last seen following a camp worker around, and he was handling poison for termites. Maybe she got into some. A friendly little kitty she was.

Bye-bye Scudder.

(top picture taken on day 2 after bathing and deworming; a bit fluffed up in the picture because she is looking at a dog under our house)