Hoki

Our third cat, now our second oldest.

Early summer 2022 I heard kittens mewing near the house. A search failed to reveal their location. The next day, the wife working upstairs in the den and I down stairs in the living room, through the sliding glass doors, I saw a kitten in the neighbor’s yard. The day before had I shared with my wife that I heard a kitten so when she came down for lunch, I told her I saw one. As the day progressed, I went upstairs to report that there was not one, but two kittens; then three, then at least four. She came down to see them all at play and asked if we should rescue them. Though I knew by “we”, she meant “me”, I enthusiastically answered “Yes.”. Watching them and their mother provided a gravely needed uplifting diversion for the three of us from the constantly extended lockdowns lite the J gov kept imposing upon us.

The odyssey the effort turned out to be was reported upon on The Cat Site that I linked to awhile back. One thing not reported there was that my wife told our son that if I was successful in rescuing the kittens, he could choose one as his. I overheard this and said nothing as I approved her decision, though it would have been nice if she had asked me in private before she decided. After some time of our son eagerly anticipating having his own kitten and watching them all play to decide which one he would like, provided I was able to save them, preexwife over heard me talking with our son about keeping one of the kittens and she blew up for me making such a decision without consulting her and that there was no way he could keep one. In a rare case of me challenging her in front of our son, I reminded her that she had made the decision that he could have one on her own and that he has been expecting to and that is was cruel to tell him he can, to have them in the house until homes could be found for the others and to not allow him to keep one.

Shocked, in a greatly soften tone, she asked if she had really said he could keep one, with tears in his eyes, our son nodded yes and I said firmly, “Yes, you did.”. Later I would notice this was a pattern with her, she would say something in the moment that fit the emotion of it but state something different later to fit the mood of that moment. She would do the same with our newest cat.

After one of the female kittens was caught, the mother cat allowed herself to be caught a second time. Sadly, the whereabouts of other three kittens was unknown. I continued to put food and water out, but both remained unconsumed day after day. Concern grew. My wife and I searched the neighborhood and asked neighbors including a woman entering a small apartment building across the street if they had heard any kittens crying recently. The woman from the apartment building said that there were two tiger stripped kittens that kept getting themselves in the drainage ditch that ran next to the building and that her son had rescued them from it only for them to return. The ditch goes under ground once it hits the road and I thought I might have heard mewing coming from the underground. Having a zoom lesson soon, I resolved to check back after it was done. We had the mother cat with us for a full week at this point and one of the two brown kittens had been sick for some time before and we were very concerned.

After the lesson I went back and this time the mewing was unmistakable. I found one kitten very near death and rescued him. It was this kitten, not the two healthier female kittens I would eventually rescue that our son chose.

Here he is reunited with his mother for the first time in a week, who, sadly, took up lying in the litter box.

Here his sister uses herself as a blanket to keep him warm.

As soon as possible that day, I took him to the vet. The vet was very upbeat, thrilled that he could eat. She gave him a massive shot of fluids as he was dehydrated that also had medicine a/o vitamins and other things he was likely short of. He had fungus growing on his skin that in addition to making his fur fall out was consuming energy he could not spare. The flea infestation was treated aggressively as he could not spare the energy they were robbing him of and to prevent fleas spreading to our cats. The medicine killed the fleas in about a day! When I asked if I could bathe him, I thought the vet was going to strangle me. He was far too weak for that. Both the second and third times I brought Hoki in to the vet, she cried as she did not expect him to make it.

Eventually, I would finally catch a third kitten; the remaining one ,the one that had fallen ill, did not survive to be captured.

After the initial life saving treatments, a routine of bathing every other day with expensive, medicated shampoo, applying anti fungal cream to three paws, two legs, his tail and a couple of places on his head twice a day, wiping down his cage twice daily, giving him and his sisters and mother other medications twice each day and offering him the high energy food several times a day was decided upon. Buuuuuuuuuuuusy.

But, it was worth it. Below, a photo of him exactly one year after the photos above.

Later, retaking possession of her original decision to allow our son to keep one, the wife remarked how it was a great idea to allow him to do so. They have strongly bonded to one another. Hoki sleeps with my son every night and during the day can usually be found underneath the covers of his bed.