. . . maybe Ruthie

In the last 24 hours I have been loved, rubbed, purred at, scratched, bitten, and peed on. No, it isn’t S&M. I rescued a stray kitten from a dumpster. Actually, she managed to escape the dumpster and run crying for her mother (who of course wasn’t there) in the pouring rain right in front of my car. Girlfriend and I had just finished dinner at Ryan’s, a busy place at night. We’d both taken our own car because I came straight from work. So girlfriend was gone already, and I was standing there in the rain in the middle of this busy parking lot unlocking my car when I saw her. Part of me wanted to just get in my car and hope some other good Samaritan would come along, but I knew she wasn’t going to last long, so the Samaritan would have to come along pretty fast. The other part of me did a quick inventory. We already have four animals—two cats among them. I’d have to keep her quarantined until I could get her to the vet. It’s time for my dog’s annual visit. And I’d had to wait for payday before I could even afford to take the dog, let alone a kitten. Plus a house reaches a saturation point—no matter how clean you are—when you have a certain number of many animals, the house smells more like them than it does like you. But I’m not the type of person who could leave a tiny kitten to a sure and horrific death. So I went after her and scooped her up.

Since then I’ve been angry. What kind of an idiot could abandon an animal like that? There’s no excuse for it. We have a local no kill shelter, Waggin Tails, and the ACLU is now working with the Sangamon Animal Shelter (we used to call it the pound) to find homes for animals. There are places to put free ads to find homes for animals. But the absolute best solution is to have the mother cat spayed. I think financial help is even available for that. I thought of all this stuff driving home with the kitten beneath my jacket, curled up on my chest, purring.

When I walked in the door girlfriend met us. She looked at me and looked at the kitten and said, "I saw you five minutes ago. How did you find time to get in this mess?" I quickly told her that my plan was to take the kitten to the vet and when it was well enough to find a home for it. So girlfriend stepped aside and we were in. And I really meant it. I wouldn’t even name the kitten because I knew that would be another step toward attachment.

The next day I came home from Decatur (where I work three days a week) and took the kitten to the vet. There I learned she was female and with the exception of fleas, ear mites, and worms, she was healthy. She is about two months old and weighs one and one-half pounds. I figure that up until the dumpster business the mother cat nursed her regularly. I had decided that if the kitten had anything serious, I was going to put it down. But that turned out to be unnecessary. In the vet’s office they treated me like I had a new baby. I got a package with food and little gifts. The women at the reception desk made a fuss over her and carried her around excitedly showing her off. Of course they wanted me to give her name from the moment I walked in the door. That’s how they keep track of animals in the computer, by name. I explained that I was not going to name her because I was not going to keep her. But I started remembering Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and it occurred to me I could just call her Cat. But Cat is a name. So I shook off those thoughts and wrote a check for a whopping $97. If I put that much money in a used car, I sure would think twice before I traded it, I thought.

Did I say she is all black and very affectionate? Did I tell you that the chore I hate the most around this house is cleaning the cat’s litter box? Having three cats would certainly compound that task. But these names have started to go through my head. Since she is black, I went over the list of African-American women I admire, like Venus Williams, Queen Latifah, and my favorite basketball player in the WNBA, Sacramento’s Ruthie Bolton-Holifield. Today I’ve been thinking that maybe Ruthie would be a good name. . .