It’s been a very busy week, and I’ll have a few announcements to hurl out soon, on the far end of some rewriting I need to get done. But for the moment, I’m going to simply post something personal.
I must preface this by noting that I’m really more of a dog person. Well, now, wait, that’s only sort of. When I first moved out from my folks’ place, I was shocked to find that I could breathe. Easily. Like, I didn’t feel like I was in the middle of some kind of weird asphyxiation torture all the time.
I realized, eventually, that it was because I wasn’t around a dog anymore when I rode in my friend Kim’s car all the way from Iksan, or was it Jeonju, to Seoul, with her two little dogs in the car. By the time we arrived (including the obligatory hour-long wait in the bottleneck traffic jam at the verge of the city of Seoul), I was sneezing, red-eyed, and suffering.
So I’m not much for any animal whose hair annoys me, really. I’d be happy with a couple of newts in a terrarium, or a fishtank with a few colorful fellas in it. That’s one reason (not the only one) that, despite Lime’s long-stated (and oft-stated) desire to have a cat, and her almost constant viewing of cat pictures online, I’ve been resistant to the idea, and had endless misgivings to express. Mostly, though, I just don’t want to find myself unable to breathe in my own home again.
But you know, there’s also such a thing as compassion, and Lime’s very attentive to the little living things around our home. There was a kitten that was mewling outside the window for two days and three nights. She heard it, not me — I tend to have music on, or tune out noises outside, but she walks to work in the mornings and heard it, the same crying that she heard at night, really loud and nearby the road on campus she walks. On the third day, she went out and looked for it, found it — it fled but somehow she caught it in some patchy grass — and brought it inside, on the advice of an online cat club who suggested that, after three days in very hot weather, alone, the cat must have been abandoned by its mother and was likely to die if nobody helped it.
We’re not sure why the cat was abandoned, though the veterinarian Lime talked to suggested the mother may have gone into heat again (they apparently sometimes do that straight after birthing a litter) or that it was maybe weak, since mama cats seem to abandon weaker offspring.
Well, as they say, the Internet was invented for the posting of cat-pictures, so here I go, fulfilling its purpose.
That’s my hand she’s balanced in, and yes, I’m freaked out by any animal with claws. But she is cute, isn’t she? The tip of her tail is white, and she’s still mewing a lot. She misses her mother, the poor little thin, but she’s adjusting rather well. Still hiding in the bottom of a box right now, but she’s having her special-baby-cat-milk, and not as freaked out by as as she was previously.
But, grumble, ahem, er, I’m still not a cat person. Even if it is soooo cute. Grumble.
By the way, the names in the title above: well, Schubert for the composer that Lime (to me, inexplicably) adores, but whom I despise; Baudelaire and Rimbaud are the French poets. And “Puppy” and “Nabang” are my weirdo suggestions. Puppy, because how many cats get called that? And as for 나방 (Nabang), it’s Korean for “moth,” which I think is clever, as the cat is black and white, but also because 나비 (Nabi, ie. “butterfly”) is the stereotypical cat name in Korea.
Yeah, we’re not really settled on a name yet. But I tell you, it’s like Lime was waiting for this day. She’s already ordered a scratching post, cat food, a litterbox, and only Bastet knows what else. Ah well, she’s happy, and I guess I don’t mind the little creature so much. Though just now, she’s meowing and meowing for no apparent reason.
I suppose I shall go have a look.