Sometime in April I think, I found a kitten on a rainy day and I named her Puddles. She was I think about a week old, maybe a little less even actually. Watching her development, I think maybe I was overestimating it. She may have only been three or four days old. I don’t know, but somehow these kittens have managed to come up to the surface on a rainy cold day. At any rate the mom had abandoned them, even though she looked for them later.

So Puddles lived and I had to nurse her completely. I had to take her in, put her under my shirt, and warm her, because she was cold. She wasn’t able to walk. She was scooting around, you know, pushing herself around with her legs. So I drove with her to the pet store and bought some milk replacement. I brought a syringe at a pharmacy, and off I went and used that to nurse her.

I was thinking about it because at the time work was kind of slow and I just put in a lot of time with her. She’d wake me up in the middle of the night and I’d get up and nurse her. I’d come home from work and, not nurse her, but feed her with the syringe and I may have actually overfed her as it turns out, but that was kind of my answer. I’d just let her go to sleep on my chest and wrap her up and put her some place. For the first few days, it was in a locked bathroom and then in the closet when I was gone during the day, and you know, she lived.

She lived, and she started walking, running, jumping, and playing, and doing all the things. Yesterday I adopted her out. Somehow I really like the idea that I love the kitten that I love so deeply like that. I just wanted her to feel good. She would lay on my chest. I would think about how much I love her and I would think about how sweet she is. I would just really feel her body against my chest, and you know, meditated on that, and she purred and slept. Then she would want to go lay down usually, or I would just take her to lay down and she would sleep alone. We just did that. Those were her things. She was either alone or with me, in a deeply bonding kind of experience.

I fed her probably five or six times a day for the first few days, and then it dropped off and the poor little kitten had diarrhea most of the time. I’d take her to the vet and the vet thought it might be this one problem, but it didn’t clear up, it just continues, so I was washing. Every time that I fed her, I would change the things that she was sleeping in, mostly those were hand towels and like kitchen towels. I had bunches of them, but I’d wind up using other things too because it would just stack up. I live alone, primarily do my own laundry and not much else, and this was double or triple my regular laundry load so it was hard to keep up.

Then I slowed down the nursing, and started feeding her the hard food with the milk in it, and the soft food, and she liked all that, and again I think that I was feeding her too much because she continued to have diarrhea, until eventually I just cut it back. She was eating hard food nicely, you know, like doing a good job of it, so I stopped all the rest of it and just gave her a little bit of the soft food once a day and everything equaled out and she’s perfectly healthy now.

Just watching her grow up and wanting her happiness. I adopt her out and the feelings are that I’m happy that my house won’t be as crowded. I’m happy for the little six year-old girl and the kitten, and I hope that they bond, and I hope that she’s happy. What I want for this kitten is for her to be happy and have the causes of happiness. I just want to make sure that she always has a good home. I think that this has been a really good experience for this little girl. She’s been around from the beginning. I brought that little kitten over and showed her off and when she was maybe two weeks old, so she’s watched her grow up and the last time she was here, the typical thing that happens with a six year-old that’s not used to cats. She’s holding the kitten and the kitten decides that she wants to leave, and of course when the kitten decides that she wants to leave, after the wiggling and stuff comes the claws and the teeth and the little girl got bitten and that made her let go of the kitten and the kitten fell on its head. You know, just all these things going on, and I think that this is just life, and I think that they’ll both be fine. I think they’re really good for each other. I think that the little girl needs a friend, and I hope for the best for both of them.

That’s what I think about that. The feelings that I have for the kitten are strong. I tend to form bonds with animals, and humans that I’m close to. I can be genuine, like super genuine. Super genuine doesn’t make any sense, does it? Because that wouldn’t be genuine, would it? But I can be genuine. I genuinely hope for the happiness of the kitten and the little girl. And the little girl’s mom, and all the kitty’s here that miss her. I can tell that their behavior is a little funny. Especially squirrel, the most recent one from outdoors that I adopted, the fifth kitty that I adopted. She and the kitten we playmates, and she really misses her. I can tell.

I don’t know if she’ll come back and visit or if this kitty will be an indoor or outdoor kitty. But I hope for the best for all of them.

I think that animals feel their feelings, their attachments, and their emotional bonds very much the same way that humans do. It’s a mammalian trait to have familial bonds. There’s a good amount of flexibility in that. When beings, animals/humans/whatever, treat each other well, those positive bonds are strong and can be strong. If they give them time, care, attention and direction. I think those components of love are important, and when they’re present, then the bonds form.