Guest Quarters.

I have to do rewrites on the book. I have to try to educate my daughter or, as we all call it around here, “Prove my idiocy daily”. I still sell a Hiphugger or two. I really should get to the gym. So, of course, I decided to take in a house-guest with indifferent personal habits and a hearty appetite.

Two weeks ago, I was at the cat-rescue place where I volunteer. The head of the group, Kate, was there, administering worming medication to all sorts of adorable tiny kittens before handing them back to their mothers. We chatted as she squirted. With her chin, she motioned to the cage we reserve for new cats whose health is unknown to us.

“Look what I found this morning. Someone left her outside in a box.”

I looked in the cage. Something stared back at me. I thought and said, “She’s…”

Now, a side note. I once read an article about some photographer who has made, it seemed, a good living for his entire career of almost three decades photographing cats. The reporter asked him whether in all that time, he had ever seen an ugly kitten. In the article, he was quoted as pausing meaningfully and then saying in weighted tones “Just once.”

I looked at this kitten. She was orange, where there was fur. Mostly, she was pinkish skin. She had a large nose with a scab on it, small beady eyes, a long hairless tail and a body which shape suggested less being born than being extruded from the sausage attachment on a Mixmaster. I started again, “She’s…are you sure she isn’t a rat?”

“No, it’s a kitten. She’s just pretty undernourished. I’m amazed she made it through the night in that box. I’m going to try to find someone to take her home, feed her on demand and pay some attention to her.”

I know this woman well; nowhere in there had she said, or even intimated, “Quinn, I now hand the baton of responsibility to you. And the baton of responsibility resembles a rat wearing an orange wig.”

I stared at her some more. I noted her eyes were slightly crossed: nice touch. I asked fearfully, “Not bottle-fed, right?”. Because after last spring, I’m not wiping butts and waiting for Death’s scythe, but Kate said, “No, she’s eating on her own. Not nearly enough, but she’s eating.” As if on cue, the cat-rat opened her mouth and delivered a silent mew; she had three teeth, all of which were crooked. I heard myself say, “I’ll keep her until she’s…”

I thought, what? Attractive? Hairy? Strong enough to star in a remake of Willard?

“…ready for adoption.” I finished. Because somewhere out there, someone is saying to their friends “What I really want is a house-pet who makes people flinch.” Kate gave her worming medication and a small amount of IV fluid to strengthen her enough to, as it turned out, scream for the entire trip home. Gazing at her face at stop lights, I decided that the vigor she was showing her temper tantrum boded well for her living through to an adoptable age. She needed a pretty name, I decided, for incentive if nothing else. I free-associated; what hair she had was orange….oranges…Navel? No. Oranges remind me of Spain…Madrid? Navarre? Valencia? Why do I know all this? Oh, right; crossword puzzles. Why doesn’t Daughter’s education want my crossword puzzle facts? Would it kill them to ask her what you call an eagle’s nest or a sewing kit?

I made a left turn, causing the cat-carrier to jostle, increasing her irritation, which helped me focus.

Galicia…Asturia…The Canary Islands…wait, back up. Galicia. That’s not bad.

I stuck my fingers in the cage and waggled them at her. I crooned “Galicia, pretty girl. You like that? You like the name Galicia?”

Her screaming stopped; I felt her little head rubbing against my fingers, which seemed like an auspicious omen. I peeked in. At some point in the previous few minutes, she had rid herself of what appeared to be three of four days’ worth of bowel movements. Purring in delight at being petted, she curled up in her filth and took a brief nap for the rest of the trip home. I now understood why Kate had sent me home with kitten shampoo.

The next few days were a blur of feeding and screaming and surprisingly copious excretions; this is the kitten we should clone and hand to every teenage girl who romanticizes having a baby. The fact that she threw fits when she couldn’t see me only added to the general noise level. She liked Consort, she enjoyed Daughter, but all six of her brain cells had decided I was Mommy, which when you look like a rat in a cheap orange wig is faint praise indeed. I carried Galicia around nearly constantly, when I wasn’t putting her in the litter box and encouraging her to give it a go, which annoyed her and made her holler. She had a free-spirited notion that if she could see the litter box from where she was standing, no matter how far away, she was in the litter box. When I wasn’t holding her, I was holding a bottle of bleach. Daughter alternated between “Awww…” and “Ew.”

And where were the pets during all of this? Well, if she was the new infant in the house, they were the older siblings. Lulabelle, the cat, has taken the attitude of “That thing which is very ratlike and is shouting is not in my house. Because if it were in my house, I would have to deal with it, which would probably mean eating it, and I think you would get irrationally emotional about it. So, I’m going to ignore on a world-class level. If I have the misfortune to see her, I will indicate my displeasure by gurgling in rage for a few minutes and then vomiting. You might want to just put the bottle of bleach on some kind of tool-belt around your waist.” The dog, on the other hand, was ecstatic from the first moment he saw her in the cat carrier while I set up her first de-fouling bath. Some combination of a cat that, unlike his regular one, didn’t seem to want to slap him and the way she smelled like partially-digested cat food was the culmination of a dream for him. Every time I would take her someplace contained for her daily “Stagger around and shout” time, the dog would insist on joining us and then proceed to play tag with her. He’s not a large dog, but he was large enough so that she got knocked over every single time they played, and he would somehow end up sitting on her, grinning in joy. I would separate them, banishing him from the room but they would shout and cry for each other from the other sides of the door. Lulabelle is her contemptuous older sister, and the dog is her affectionately abusive older brother. And I’m the mother shouting “Oh, would you three just go watch television or something!”

Somehow, along the way, her hair grew in. The scab fell off her nose, which stayed the same size, while her face and her eyes grew. She became cute. Consort, who would take her out of the cage in the evening for a friendly game of “AUGH! BITE YOUR FINGER!”, said things like “She’s really sweet. She can stay, if you want.” This was an incredibly kind statement, considering that I was dosing him with Benadryl twice a day just so he didn’t fall down in an anaphylactic seizure. I assured him that no, I was enjoying her very much but that didn’t mean I needed to add another litter box permanently to the household. Daughter enjoyed her thoroughly, but also had enough experience with foster-kittens that she wasn’t putting too much of her emotional life into this one fuzzy little body.

This weekend, we’ll take her into the rescue, where she will stay until Sunday night, so that people looking for a kitten can meet her. Then, we’ll bring her home during the week. I imagine someone will put in an application for my loud little friend and the home-check will be done within days. We’ll have another week with her, but probably not another two weeks. She’ll go to be someone’s cat, and she’ll have another name, and with any luck another cat-worshipping dog. We’ll have memories of a kitten I would vote the Most Improved Player.