In the past 15 or so years we’ve lived in this house, we’ve managed to rescue and adopt only three total kittens – Gigi, Domino and Loki.
Granted, Gigi managed to get knocked up twice before we could fix her and had relatively small litters, but Domino and Loki were both promptly fixed as soon as they were of age.
Well, that overall demographic all changed right at the end of June when a new kitten turned up one Saturday morning.
Naturally, mom blamed me for managing to pick up a stray hitchhiker, but after careful review of our entire family members’ locations prior to the kitten’s appearance, we’re pretty sure it’s her fault!
Either way, she wasn’t game on having to nurture another indoor kitten so initially decided that it would be an outside feline and we’d care for it accordingly.
That meant we’d get it all of its shots and neutered appropriately while letting it frolic on all six acres of our land and probably the neighbors’ too.
After all, the neighbor cats come over all the time and just lay around by our pool and beg for handouts just as much as any of our own do!
The kitten took refuge from the elements and our flock of chickens in the barn and we were content to leave him be at that point with his own food and water bowls for a while.
Well, that changed once the
foundling made it through 4th of July celebrations and festivities without running off out of fear.
It was only when we were about to get a deluge of rain, that mom made the decision to let me safely trap the kitten and take him down to the closest veterinarian’s office to get checked out.
My best friend had a humane trap that we’d borrowed before to help relocate an armadillo, so all it took was one quick phone call and a trip down the road to borrow it again.
I baited it with a smidge of canned food and waited a few hours until checking it just before sundown and found a very grumpy kitten captured within.
Up until that little vet visit, mom swore up and down that the kitten was female – but the vet confirmed my suspicions about it being a male.
The vet even told us that though the kitten was underweight, he was in overall good health and we’ve started him on his first round of vaccines.
He’ll be getting his next evaluation done on Friday, Aug. 4, and his rabies shot finally.
Then I’ll be able to let him out of his quarantine room.
Also, in keeping with our family tradition, once we found out about his sex, we were able to let him choose his own name.
After about five tries, and really wanting him to pick the name “Spock” because of his giant ears – he chose the name “Bones.”
And that’s still in the realm of nerdy names as a nod to Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy from Star Trek.
Now that he’s in that extra lanky long legs and tail stage with his small body and head, I’ve taken to Google to possibly decipher what breed of cat he actually is supposed to be.
The closest I’ve gotten is a Lynx Point Siamese cat and he should be a very pretty boy when he’s fully grown – we’ll just have to wait and see.
