My Would-be Mugger

Monday, June 01, 2009

It was 9:30 at night, barely dark, and I wasn’t even carrying a purse, just my house keys and my flash drive, on my way to the Internet Café. I wasn’t expecting to be mugged.

He was waiting in the shadows, waiting and watching. When I came even with his hiding place behind a fence, he leapt at me. I spotted him a split second before and took a step backward. So instead of landing on me; he landed on the sidewalk in front of me.

I stared at my assailant. “Well! You are quite a dirty thing,” I said, in Greek so he’d understand.

“Niaou,” he replied, which is also Greek.

“And you’re not handsome, either.”

“NiAAAAou!”

“Kai esai poly mikro,” I said, “And you’re very small.” Much too small to try to mug anybody.

I tried to get away from him but no, he hasn’t going to let that happen; he could recognize a sucker when he saw one. He followed me, begging all the while, chanting a loud, plaintive little rhyme: “Niaou, niaou, niAAou! Dos mou kati na fao! ”Give me something to eat!” (Note for all you Greek students: Modern Greek, being an irrational language, lacks the dative case.)

Or at least that’s what I thought the little thug was saying.

Finally, knowing it was no good, I said, in Greek, “Come here.” So he did. And as I bent down toward him, he took a flying leap and grabbed me by the shoulder. He hunkered down, dug in his claws, and held on firmly as I walked. I could feel and hear him purring in my ear.

The night manager of the Internet Café said no, I could not just quickly check my e-mail, not with a kitten on my shoulder – or in my lap, either. never mind the creature was behaving very well. And no, he didn’t want any cat. As Ogden Nash, the humorist, once observed,

The trouble with a kitten is that
Eventually, it becomes a CAT.

Somehow I also remembered another little ditty of his:

If called by a panther,
Don’t anther.

So I went home and gave him some cat food from a new bag. He purred the whole time he ate.

We don’t have a litter box, so now what? I thought a few minutes and then remembered we have a huge pot out on the balcony, big enough to plant a tree in, and it is filled with potting soil. That would do until morning. I set the kitten in it. He just sat there. I took his paw and used it to scratch at the soil, and then he got the idea.

I found a very small ball of leftover yarn and made him a toy with it and we played until he was exhausted. Then we went to bed. I spread out a baby blanket at the foot of the bed and he liked that.

The nervy little guy attacked me twice more during the night. Once, my toe twitched and the next thing I knew, a prickly ball of fur had slammed into it. The other time, I got it between the eyes when I made the mistake of opening them. His philosophy is, if it moves, pounce!

He is only about 10 weeks old. He’s mostly white with not-very-symmetrical, dark gray markings. There’s gray on his head and back; his tail is all dark gray except for the white tip. His left eye has pink rims and his right eye has black, making his eyes appear to be different sizes. But what he lacks in looks, he certainly makes up in affection. He even comes when called, provided you call him in Greek. Comes running, every single time.

When he isn’t sleeping or attacking, he’s snuggling. As a matter of fact, such extreme friendliness is suspicious. I’ll bet he more or less belongs to somebody. I’ll ask around.

He’s taking a little catnap right now, leaving me free to type. I have no idea what I’ll do with him, either short-term (the rest of today, tomorrow) or long-term. Even if I didn’t have two cats back in Richmond that I already don’t know what to do with, and even if we were to do our homework and find out how to get him through customs when we get back to America, there’s still the fact that we’re planning to spend 10 days in England before that.

I will try my best to find him a home here, but if I don’t, he will have to go back where he came from.

Or else I will choose some dark night and slip him into the back yard of the cat-loving, retired pathologist who lives across from the Internet Café.

Stay tuned.


MINOR UPDATE: In the afternoon, I took kitty to Demetra, the nearest veterinarian, together with a fresh stool sample. I told her I was afraid he might have worms. Demetra unwrapped the foil, examined the specimen, and said, “Gemati.” Full (of worms). I thought you had to look under a microscope to tell that, and I thought you had to know what *kind* of worms, in order to give the right medicine, but what do I know?

Apparently she had a one-for-all kind of pill. She broke it in half and we gave it to him. She gave me the other half, to be administered “after three days”. Then she tried to spray some stuff between his shoulders. I haven’t seen any signs of any fleas, but may as well be careful.

The spray nozzle was stuck and the stuff wouldn’t come out, so Dr. Demetra unscrewed the top and poured some between the kitten’s shoulders. Poured rather more than I usually put between my cats’ shoulders, as in twice as much, accidentally, but again, what do I know? It’s probably Advantage or Revolution, and I’ve read those are very safe medicines. “They’ll all depart now,” she said, referring to both internal and external parasites.

Demetra took my phone number in order to let people know the cat is available.

She says he’s no more than 8 weeks old.

I paid my three Euros and left there with a kitten that has already learned he does not like veterinarians! It’s okay; she doesn’t particularly care for cats, either. She’s a dog person.