A month ago, I came home from work to an unusually quiet Maisie and Robert with one eyebrow arched in contemplation.
Mum! You wont be cross, will you?
Let me guessyou sold Oscar for a million pounds? I replied, half-joking. Oscar is our hairless Peterbald cat, blue-blooded pedigree and all. His lineage is so impeccable that the rest of us seem like commoners by comparison. Even Robertwhose fathers side could probably trace their roots back to King Richard. If you tried, you really could sell Oscar for a million. Or something close, anyway.
No, nothing like that, Maisie assured me earnestly. Its the opposite, actually!
What do you mean, the opposite? I asked, puzzled. Did you buy another cat for a million pounds?
Maisies face lit up with the sort of beaming smile reserved for delivering Wonderful News.
No, Mum! I didnt have to pay a penny! I got everything absolutely free!
At this point, Robert began to laugh so hard I had to demand an explanation. Truthfully, I already had a rough idea. All I really wondered was just how bad the situation was.
It turned out to be quite significant. Maisies classmate, Eliza, had found a tiny kitten in a ditch. Shed taken it home, only to be told to get rid of it (something about their dog and, well you know). So Eliza brought the poor thing to schoolfrightened, wild-eyed (both the kitten and Eliza)and pleaded for someone to take it.
You see, Mum, Maisie explained, no one wanted her at all. I just felt so sorry for her
And thats when I wanted to bash my own head in with the broom. Mostly out of sympathy for myself, looking wild-eyed and desperate, once again swept into this farce. Eight years ago, Robert had spotted a blind, week-old tabby behind our block of flats. We nursed it with a bottle for three weeks, only for the poor creature to die suddenly in the night. That happens with kittens that littlethey just dont make it sometimes. Oscar arrived not long after, but the wound left by that kitten stuck around for ages.
That old ache woke up again as I imagined repeating the entire ordealso unpredictable, or rather, so predictably grim. Besides, I certainly hadnt intended to take in another cat right now.
Well then, show me this priceless new gift of yours.
They presented me with a battered cardboard box. Among a heap of rags, therewell, in Czech theyd say strašidlosat something truly odd. Smaller than Maisies palm, a grubby grey thing, so pitifully thin that it almost made my hand lighter to pick it up. A mangy skeleton of a kitten with the eyes of a dying goblin. It was painfully clear why nobody else wanted her.
Maisie and I had a quick heart-to-heart about being responsible for those you tamebut only as a formality. It was obvious to everyone that this skinny, shivering soup-ingredient was staying with us. If only because she had absolutely nowhere else to go. Honestly, Id rather have managed without her, but fate had decided.
With a baby already at homenot to mention Oscarthe tiny kitten skeleton was placed in quarantine for a day until a vet could check her over. Quarantine meant an empty box room, a big cardboard box, a soft blanket, a hot water bottle, a makeshift litter tray, and a couple of cuddly toys. Every four hours, wed take shifts to feed her. Luckily, our familys odd hours worked well for this: Robert and I sleep late, Maisies always up at dawn, and Romilly wakes up through the night. There was always someone ready to poke a bottle of kitten milk into her mouth, even if Romilly herself isnt quite up to it yet!
In between feeds, Maisie kept her company constantly, afraid shed get lonely.
I realised the kitten really wasnt lonely when I found her snuggled beneath the sofa blanket one night, the cardboard hotel resignedly cast aside. Somehow, the little thing had escaped the closed box and managed to climb the high sofahow, Ill never know. Our little Houdini wriggled her skinny paws and refused to divulge her secrets.
The vet fished her from the carrier with two fingers and exclaimed, What a beauty!
Our beauty fixed him with her signature goblin stare and squeaked, Mew.
Brilliant girl, smiled the vet approvingly.
I, meanwhile, was very curious: how does one wash such a kitten? With what? And how do you dry her? At maybe 100 grams, she was feeble as a feather in rainlook at her wrong, and her leg might snap! The vet had simpler ideas. He unceremoniously doused our hundred grams of kitten in soapy water under the tap, washed her as if he were scrubbing tights, and all but wrung her dry in a towel. The kitten didnt protestmaybe she even enjoyed it, or maybe the ordeal was so shocking that her mindassuming a head that size has onerepressed it instantly.
(And dont ask me how much subconscious can fit in a walnut-sized skull. Frankly, I doubt theres room for much of anything.)
The vet, with a constant whistle of amazement, conducted every necessary procedure and declared, Shes all right overalljust extremely undernourished, anaemic, and low on strength.
Youve saved her, he told Maisie.
Eliza saved her, Maisie corrected, I only took her home from school.
Which year? he asked, businesslike.
Year Six, said Maisie.
Then you definitely saved her, he replied, as if convinced that a Year Six classroom is just as risky for a fading kitten as a ditch.
Once washed, our scarecrow looked a bit fluffieralmost feline, if not exactly prettier. For a week and a half, she did little but sleep and sip her bottle. Every digestive hiccup nearly drove me to despair; I didnt want to lose another kitten. I constantly checked whether she was breathing, whether shed eaten, and, well, what came next. The vet soon recognised my voice on the phone. When we returned with yet more stomach issues, he patted her, noticeably rounder by now, and cheerfully said, No need to worry now. Youre stuck with this cat for years to come.
Human attachment is odd. A few weeks before, if youd asked if I wanted a mangy bundle of bones and claws, the question would have bemused me. But after worrying about her survivaland watching Maisie fretnews that wed be stuck with her for years suddenly felt like the best headline of the day, even the month.
Oh, you should see our best news of the month. As the vultures sing in The Jungle Book cartoonits just a pile of bones, trundling about.
For the first day, we thought our kitten was a girl. But before the vet visit, I took a closer lookno, a boy. So Maisie and I spent the entire bus ride to the surgery discussing what to name him. The night before wed shown her an old cartoon about a house goblin called Baggy, and shed spent the evening shouting, Baggins! Baggins! It sounded wonderfully plaintive. So the kitten became Baggins.
Only then did the vet announce that she was, in fact, a girl, but by then the name had stuck. So Baggins-the-boy became Baggins-the-girl. We call her Baggie or Bag, or sometimes just Fanny (if were feeling posh, Frances). Romilly simply calls her Weeeee!
Our hundred-gram kitten is now half a kilo and brimming with sass. Shes still not a beauty by any means, yet every evening theres a queue of family members desperate for a cuddle. When that fluffy little monster purrs on my lap, all feels right in the world. I cant explain why.
Incidentally, the vet claims shes a calico. Looking at her, shes every shade of grey, but if you look closely, theres a white undercoat, some grey, and a biscuity-blonde stripe across her snout, like a domino maskfrom forehead to chin. Practically a Union Jack!
And today, outside the house, I met a big, wild, gorgeous catblazing colours, utterly feral. She prowled the bushes, wary, but kept glancing back at the house. She was a calico, too. I told her that Baggins was doing just fine.
