A little more than a week ago on Wednesday afternoon I was rushing to get out of the house. I had decided that day I was going to do some errands before I went to school. So, in one of my rarest moments ever, I left the house with some time to spare to get to school (although probably not enough for my errands). Well, anyways, I didn’t get far. I took the shortcut through the alley next to my house, walking briskly right past the lifeless kitten curled up in the alley way. It took a few seconds for me to register what I had just saw. I stopped and looked over my shoulder. Yep, sure enough, there it was: a little white and yellow tabby kitten curled up in fetal position on the concrete. My heart sank and I slowly started to walk over. I could see it’s fur was quite dirty and even wet-looking. I edged up close enough to stick out my finger and touch it when suddenly it’s ear twitched. Although I felt some relief that it was still alive, I also couldn’t help but feel it just makes the situation worse knowing she’s going to die in a couple hours. But that thought also reminded me of the clock ticking away and the things I needed to get done. I started to look around and see if anyone else could possibly step in and attempt to care for this dying kitten while I get on with my life. Everyone else was just walking by without a second glance…well save for the little girl and her a-mah (maid). They had stopped to look at the kitten as well. I turned to the a-mah and said “What can we do?” and she promptly and matter-of-factly replied, “Just wait to die.” They turned around and went on their way. I kept staring at the kitten and my watch. I felt torn between helping the poor thing and doing my err– I could hardly finish the thought before I realized how stupid I was being. Was mailing a few letters and going to the bank really so urgent? I touched the kitten again and noticed even more response. I also noticed that she was covered in sticky grease. All over her body, in fact. Even the insides of her ears were dirty! And all the grease had made her fur into a perfect dirt-magnet. As I was trying to figure out how she managed to get this dirty, I realized that we were also just behind the cha siu house (the store where they roast pigs). My god, the only thing I could figure out was that she must have fallen into a bucket of bacon grease!
Clearly, any sort of rescue operation for her was going to need some protective gear. We also happened to be close to the public toilets, so I ran in and grabs several wads of toilet paper. I carefully rolled her on to the bed of toliet paper and much to my surprised she became fully alert. She had just been sleeping! And I had thought she was dead…. ha! Well, to be fair, her condition was still miserable. Although she was meowing and resisting my efforts, she was clearly a very young and weak kitten. She couldn’t have been more than a few weeks old. I walked around the block to the nearest vet office (actually there are several around our area). As I walked in I felt another pang of guilt that a few minutes ago I was going to just leave her to die while a vet was half a block away.
The vet assured me that she was old enough to start eating solid food and I got the phone number for the local SPCA. Back home, I knew I had to clean her up as soon as possible. Giving her a bath made me realize that she wasn’t as close to death as I thought. After the tortuous bath experience, I knew the time I had to spare to get to school was gone. So I hurriedly gave her a box, towel, and the very best of scraps I could find in the fridge (which was actually quite bad). The SPCA told me that I could bring her in but I figured that it would be easier for me to keep him a night and take him tomorrow. Of course, at the lecture that afternoon, I couldn’t stop thinking about the kitten back home. When I did get back home, I realized the grease was so thick that she still needed another bath. Just as I finished up this matter, Goldie came home and I had to explain the situation. She tried her best to “put her foot down” and tell me that we can’t take care of her. But of course, the moment she saw the tiny fluffball, she stopped the lecturing.
That night I got the kitten to eat a little. But it was easy to see that she was really quite weak and dehydrated. And of course, it goes without saying that she was an extremely skinny thing. Although I was secretly quite excited at having a kitten in the house, I was sad to see just how un-kitten-like he was. She could hardly walk straight, let alone do silly kitten antics. The next morning Goldie reminded me that I had promised to take her to SPCA. I could feel myself dragging my feet already, I knew that there was a good chance I’d never see her again. And while I knew that I couldn’t adopt her myself, I still couldn’t help but want to at least see her bouncing around like a normal kitten should be. I held out one hope that the SPCA would let me foster her and that’s what got me to bite the bullet and take her there. So I packed her up in a little “Hello Kitty” bag we had sitting around the house and took her on her first bus ride.
Despite my optimism of fostering her, the process of turning her over to the SPCA seemed pretty depressing. I had to sign a paper releasing her from my care which was, in a sense, exactly what I DIDN’T want to do. I told them how interested I was in fostering her, but they said that they first had to make sure she could pass the vet exam. Though they didn’t explain what happens if a kitten is considered too sick, I could guess what the result would be. But at least, they wrote down a note to call me after the exam and let me know what would happen to her. I left with my empty “Hello Kitty” bag feeling mightily depressed. Though I only had one night with her, I clearly had already gotten a little attached.
For the rest of the day, I kept one eye on the clock and one on my phone. After a lot of stressing whether they were actually going to call me back, I got the phone call. The vet said they were concerned she hadn’t gone to toilet yet and so they would still need to hold her for a while. But she assured me that if things look good in the next day or two, they would call me first for fostering. Needless to say, that made my day.
So, that night Goldie and I talked over her name. I asked her how to translate “bacon grease” and we came up with 猪油糕 (which could also be translated as “lardcake”). It also has a slang meaning in Cantonese of being “not too smart.” Well, I know it sounds like a mean name. But this follows exactly in the old Chinese tradition of naming your baby a horrible name. The belief is that if the baby has a bad name, the evil spirits won’t be tempted to steal the baby away. After the baby survives the first year, then a big celebration is held and a real name is given. And that’s the idea here, I guess.
Of course, you probably see where this story is going. A couple days later I picked up Lardcake from the SPCA and she’s been (literally) jumping leaps and bounds since then. It didn’t take much more than a little food and water to bring her around to a more normal kitten-level of activity. And now it’s just a case of fattening her up and giving her some basic manners. It’s the latter one that is the real challenge. Everyday she learns something new–like biting feet–and we have to help her “unlearn” it. But I think she’s doing pretty good behavior-wise. I feel like I am being a better mother than before (I am sorry Ziggy, but I think I may have spoiled you…). Besides, seeing Lardcake become a healthy, normal kitten is what makes the experience so special. Everytime I look at her, it’s hard to imagine that I nearly left her to die on the street. And everytime I see her jumping around and playing, I remember that she nearly missed out on this joy. I know that some people would look at me funny for being so sentimental about a kitten’s life. It’s not that cats are in short supply, I know that for sure. But what really touched me in this experience was the fact that it’s not so much about this KITTEN’s life but the life itself. Every living thing in this world knows the struggle to survive. And it’s hard to fathom how resilient life is, but even harder to realize that our only (but greatest) reward in struggling to live is life itself.
Anyways, it’ll be sad to say goodbye to her after a few weeks, I know. But I am happy knowing that chances are she’s going to end up with a life worth living for.
