Sep 09 2009
And then there were two…
Mintaka arrived in our lives after much deliberation - or as my husband likes to say, ‘due to shiny thing syndrome.’ I was concerned that Reine was depressed after Sandy died so I decided she needed a new friend. Of course I needed a special friend for her, someone who would appreciate her energy and her humor, someone to appreciate her love of water.
My mom told me about the new Bengal cat they had just gotten. I was intrigued. The cat was amazing! I wanted one. I searched and found a breeder close to us. Her website made her sound great. I talked to her on the phone, things still sounded good. So we decided on a kitten. Well, after she told us that our first three choices were already taken, we decided on the only other kitten available. Mintaka.
She was bred for her small head we were told. In case you were wondering - that’s code for dumb as a doorknob, sack of hammers, load of bricks, and any other cliche you can think of - combined.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The day we were due to pick her up I had just come off of a nightshift, I intended to sleep both directions of the four hour drive, but I was too excited to sleep on the way there.
When we arrived, half -hour early, the breeder was still asleep. She was upset with us for being early, despite knowing we lived four hours away, and could only give an approximate time of arrival. Then she began smoking as she asked us to come in. We entered the den. The stench of twenty dirty, non-clumping cat boxes greeted us as we entered the house. We saw a cat here or there, most of them were beautiful cats. Then the first one went into the litter box. The squelch of liquid feaces hitting the side of the litter box interrupted our conversation with the breeder.She explained that it was an older kitten who had been weaned, but then had taken up nursing again, causing the diarrhea. I didn’t question her. Over the course of the next fifteen minutes we heard four more cats use the box. Then we smelt it. Sulpher, rotten eggs, ammonia, bile…It seemed that anything that could come out of these cats had. We seriously considered refusing to buy the kitten at that point, but she had a policy that she would only hold the kitten for us if we paid upfront. We knew why.
But the kitten came with a health guarantee so we thought we’d be okay.
It was time for us to go, but where was Mintaka? twenty minutes later we found her, curled up in a basket - soaking wet. She’d either peed in the basket she was sleeping in - or been peed on. Either way there was no way I was going to hold the new kitten until she’d been washed.
We drove home and Mintaka screamed the entire four hours. I didn’t sleep.Apparently if you combine me, my sinuses, and thirty cats in an enclosed space I can’t breath. I spent the next three days on antihistamines. I slept.
Mintaka stayed quarantined while we awaited the vet tests to see if she was sick or not. Reine stood outside the door and screamed at her, Mintaka screamed back.
Thus began our life with two cats.
