The kitty within
Further adventures in feline midwifery
Shawna Sweeney, volunteer staff
The day that I got my first kitten I was most concerned with basic items like food and cat litter. I wanted her to be happy and well-fed so she could enjoy her new home. I wanted to be a responsible pet owner. I had no idea that the stakes were about to be raised.
After a few months, my kitten started turning into a cat. I knew she needed to be spayed, but I was dead broke. I couldn’t afford a box of macaroni and cheese, let alone a trip to the animal clinic. I figured she could just stay in the house when she went into heat and it would not be a big deal. I was wrong.
Apparently cats in heat are nothing to mess around with. Her primal will turned out to be far more than I could handle. She whined incessantly and roamed the house like a prisoner of war. She would wait by the front door and flash through my legs when I came home. She even knocked screens out of windows in the mad rush to get outside.
She became very popular and had several gentleman callers, but never bothered to properly introduce them. I was left completely out of her exciting new world of hissing and humping.
For the first few weeks, I did not believe she was pregnant, but soon she started to bulge in all the wrong places, and I knew I had a situation on my hands. I didn’t want her to have a kitty abortion, but I had no clue what I would do with all those kittens.
She grew larger and larger until one day she started howling in anguish. I found her panting in the living room and took her upstairs to the makeshift birthing area that I built.
She became very unhappy as the first kitten was crowning, and leapt up from the floor to scramble away. I grabbed her and held on firmly as the first kitten came out. There were many unfamiliar fluids and odours involved. It was kind of gross. Her eyes bulged like she could not quite believe what had happened, but her maternal instincts kicked in quickly, and she started cleaning the tiny kitten.
All unfamiliar fluids aside, it really was beautiful to watch. Kittens came out one after the other until she had all four of them cleaned and tucked against her stomach. Then she leaned back and passed out.
Time passed and the kittens got older and older until their eyes opened and they started romping all over the house. They were hilarious to watch and I really enjoyed having them, but I knew that one day soon they, too, would turn into cats. I had to get rid of them before that happened.
I never thought I would become a vendor in the tough market of the kitten trade, but sometimes you have to adapt to harsh circumstances. I quickly became a shrewd kitten pimp. I talked them up to friends and family and found several tentative owners, but by the time they were old enough to leave the house, only one had been officially claimed.
I scrambled to find homes for the remaining three kittens, but no one I knew was interested. I asked everyone I could think of if they wanted a kitten and the answer was always no. Things were not looking so good.
I was on a crash course to becoming a crazy cat lady. I had apocalyptic visions of my home being overrun by cats. Soon I would not be able to support my feline population, and I knew that when the food ran out they would rise up to destroy me. I was getting scared.
In the end, some friends came through and we found good homes for all of the kittens, but it was a long and exhausting process. I was embarrassed that my abject poverty had caused the kitten problem in the first place, and I vowed to get the mother spayed as soon as possible.
The path to being a crazy cat person is shorter than you think. If you have young animals, my best advice is to get your pets spayed or neutered as soon as you can. Avoid the reproduction trap and you can prevent becoming a kitty pimp. It’s for the best.
