Just under eight years ago I was talked into adopting a seriously premature rescue kitten through a friend. Details from then.
When I got him, he was a helpless, 2 1/2 - 3 week old with fleas, ear mites, worms, a really bad URI and who knows, probably a demonic possession. He spent the first three plus weeks in our home quarantined in an unused upstairs bathroom, where I visited every few hours to feed, clean, play, give medicine or just run the shower so the steam would loosen his chest. By the way, because of the circumstances of how I got him, we don’t know his actual for real date of birth. But it was mid-September and we picked today because it was the day we moved into our then new house, so we assigned him the DOB.
While locked in the bathroom until he was big enough to get blood drawn and ensure he was safe for the others, he learned to listen at the A/C-furnace registers to know what was going on through the rest of the house, which he still does. We call it Cuervo listening to his friends from the vent.
During that time, he bonded, or I guess imprinted on me. I am, almost literally his mother. He will follow me everywhere I go. At night he comes downstairs at bedtime to harangue me to head upstairs. He wakes me most mornings by licking my forehead, drooling and purrinig all over my face.
If Bear, the secondary, lesser cat should come near me, or even dare to enter the upstairs bedroom while I’m in it, he gets chased away.
He to this day, still never talks. I’ll get a squeak out of him as I feed him because I’ve taught him manners and he has to say please. When I go up the stairs, he will stop in front of me at the bottom step and won’t let me up until I pet him and say “good boy Cuervo”, then he runs up ahead of me.
Some will say “aw good on you CatDude for rescuing Cuervo and saving his life”, but honest to jeebus, in the time since I’ve gotten him, my life took a lot of crazy turns, ups and downs, some of them life changing. So to my point of view, we saved each other. So many times over the past eight years I’ve been down, and being able to know that he was there, and he needed me I think helped me tough it up and get through.
So Happy Birthday buddy, we saved each other.
