Phantom Kitty

So there I was on Friday afternoon working on the house so that it can be painted. I was scraping and ripping down ivy and all that while trying not to think about my tooth since there were no dentists in or any who could see me until sometime next week.

I hate not having insurance.

So when I sat down that evening, I heard a very odd sound. A kitten was mewing in the basement - in that "I'm lost come find me" kind of way.

So I went downstairs and figured that it was coming from the same place that Cinder had her litter back in August. I knew that she had two and one was dead immediately and the other died within a day or so. What I saw was a black and white kitten around two weeks old. So then I thought: "Did she have another litter?"

Well, I pulled it from the basement and found a box for it. Since my cats are quarantined into the basement for a while, I left the kitten's box under a table so that it would be somewhat out of the way. After about two hours of it crying, I started to wonder where Cinder was. Since she can't get out and she has plenty of food - I couldn't figure out why she was letting it whine so much.

I went down to check on things and saw Cinder and Rusty looking down on it as though it were some kind of alien life form that was disrupting the harmony of their basement kingdom.

So I picked up Cinder to try and coax her into the box, and that's when it hit me. She's not lactating. Her nipples are flat and dry.

This was somewhat confusing but since I don't know that much about the care and raising of cats I called in my expert; my mother.

Since the 'Time before Times' she's been caring for animals. It is this quality of hers that earned me my first nickname while I was still en utero. She had always been taking home stray cats and such and nursing them back to health so I was simply another 'Tomcat' that she had found. At least that's one of the stories I've heard on the topic.

She suggested that I show some attention to the kitten in hopes of getting Cinder to take care of it - some kind of maternal jealousy thing I think. That didn't work. The kitten mewed and cried all night long without so much as a five-minute break between bursts.

Saturday morning came and it was still screaming for attention or food or both. I went down to check things out and Cinder was no where to be found and Rusty looked like a new father who had been up all night long with a screaming baby. Not a happy camper. I got a hold of my expert and asked for some advice. She said for me to bring it over to her house so I bundled up the meow-machine and headed over.

She has a few cats at her place (to put it mildly) and one of them had just finished nursing a litter of her own. The hope was that she might adopt this new kitten. While we were waiting to see if her cat would adopt the strange kitten, I had a chance to look through my journals to find out some dates. There was simply no way for Cinder to have gotten pregnant after her litter and had this kitten that fast. It's only been a month. Maybe 5 weeks at best and the kitten is, itself, at least two-weeks old (due to its eyes being open).

So I have no idea where the kitten came from. I did have a hole in my basement window's screen for about three days so it's possible another cat dropped it off down there - but I would have thought that Rusty - who almost never leaves - would have informed her that it was a bad idea. Also, I sealed the screen gap on Wednesday morning and didn't start hearing the kitten until Friday afternoon.

So where did the thing come from?

Phantom kitty.