Since I could remember, I’ve always wanted my own cat. I sorta had one before when I was 8 or 9 years old, which was the neighbours cat which I “stole” (actually, I kept feeding and playing with it and it thought that I was it’s actual master). Whenever I had school holidays and my parents basically didn’t have time to take care of me due to work, I would be left with my grandparents and my cousins – their house had at least two to three cats. So my love of this animal really came from there.
On the 16th October 2011, Yen Mun and I adopted a nice looking male kitten, which after some discussion, we named Elphar (pronounced Alpha). The people at SPCA said it was about six weeks old and it’s such a joy adopting him. We paid a RM100 fee which covers most of the deworming and vaccinations (need to pay RM50 for a fourth deworming and second vaccination) which I think is a pretty good deal. The RM100 is tax deductible too.
That visit was the third time I went to SPCA. The staff tell me there are around 3-5 kittens being delivered there everyday and about 1000 of these will be adopted. This means less than another thousand are put down every year =(. Quite a wake up call for me.. that if I don’t need to buy a cat.. better to adopt to save a life. Surprisingly there are many old cats, pedigree ones which were there. So sad…
Anyway, preparations was elaborate getting the cat in. Read up a book and materials online.. all the way from food, to bathing, security, how it takes a dump and so on. Even got myself a carrier, bowl, kitty litter trays and food.. all set and invested weeks before the cat was brought in.
Elphar is quite a friendly fella.. doesn’t seem to be too scared (though very cautious of surroundings). The only thing is he is very afraid of heights. I don’t blame him.. so am I. Initially, I wanted a medium-hair.. which I’m not sure if Elphar is.. but I think I’ll settle for him. He does have a pretty furr. Hopefully it will grow up to be even fluffier.
Whenever it is not sleeping, it is running around all over the place non-stop. It seems to have found a favourite spot in my bookshelf to nap whenever I open the carrier. When I go to sleep, since it is still vulnerable, I lock him up in the carrier. So yes, need to suffer early in the morning to let it out and play for awhile since it won’t stop mewing if I don’t. I’m getting used to the routine – feed, clean, play, clean litter, clean carrier, change/wash cloth (bed) and so far one event of bathing (he smelled like pee when he first came in).
I think we’ve warmed up to one other pretty well. Hope we both grow up to be best pals =)
