Penning this quickly before bed, I have spent most of the evening hoovering the house and fumigating each room as last night I noticed some FLEAS on my beloved Hamish! Poor thing was scratching like mad and then I saw little crawly things on top of his head. I felt awful banishing him to the kitchen overnight, but it was for the best to try and minimise the possibility of an infestation.
Being a first time pet owner (I’m not sure if you can count gerbils?) this is the first time in seventeen months this has happened and has given me great cause for concern. The decision to take on a kitten was made very quickly, maybe if I’d thought about it too much I wouldn’t have taken the leap. It came about because the cat of a friend at work had unexpectedly had kittens and he urgently needed to find homes for them. The family were going on holiday and with the kittens being so young he couldn’t get anyone to look after them while they were away.
At the time I was at band camp a.k.a. The Scottish International Flute Summer School in Perth. My friend had sent a cute photo on WhatsApp, and everyone on the course thought he was gorgeous. We spent a whole evening deciding names – I wanted a Scottish name because I was in Scotland – so it ended up being a foregone conclusion that I would have him.
I must admit I found the first month or so quite stressful, I really wasn’t prepared for having responsibility for another life – a living being who was totally dependent on me. He was only seven weeks old and I didn’t know what I was doing or what I was supposed to do. With help from various friends who had cats, and reading up on all things cats we muddled through and he quickly became the love of my life. I am now officially a cat slave and no longer bat an eyelid when he wakes me up at 4am to go downstairs to fix his breakfast!
Every day is a school day and I learn something new as we go through each stage together: the injections; the microchip debacle (a future post possibly); the ‘operation’; a short-lived endeavour to turn him into an adventure cat i.e. keeping him as a house cat and taking him outside on a harness (although I did take him to the woods a couple of times, much to the puzzlement of the dog walkers, another story for a future post!); fitting the cat flap and teaching him how to use it, allowing him out on his own … and now the fleas.
I spend my time in a constant state of worry when it’s 2am and he isn’t home (I have to remind myself he’s now a teenager and probably partying at the Kitty Cat Nightclub somewhere living his best life lol) but that is slowly receding. I know that you can’t compare having a cat with having a child, however this experience has given me some insight into how difficult it must be for parents – the constant worry that they might be doing something wrong, and that something might happen – and I have a new appreciation for anyone who has children.
At the same time though, he’s been such a joy and he demonstrates all the things cats do when they are happy, so I am happy knowing that he is happy! He has grown into a beautiful cat with a lovely nature and, as I tell him daily, he’s my favourite thing in the whole wide world 🐈
Elizabeth Mooney 