For the past week, I had heard loud, incessant cat cries emanating from my alley. The cats sounded like they were either in heat or in labor. I’m not very knowledgeable about cats so I couldn’t really determine what all the shrieking was about. However, from the sound of things I sensed that something was not quite right.
On Monday night, my friend and I heard the cries once again and peered out the window to discover a little kitten stumbling around in the dark. It looked very helpless and didn’t seem to be able to walk or see very well. It was dark and we couldn’t see very clearly but we heard its feeble cries. We were heartbroken but I didn’t know whether it was wise to go downstairs and bring it up. Perhaps the mother was still around and just left to fetch some food. I didn’t want to mistakenly take a cat away from its mother. Therefore, after some debate, we decided to not “save” the cat. However, we both agreed that if we heard the little kitten crying again the next day we would bring it back home.
Tuesday morning as I left for my workout I looked around the street to see if the baby kitten was around but it was nowhere in sight. I assumed that it must have either found its mother or its way back home. After a full day’s work, I returned home around 5pm and right as I stepped off the car, I again heard the familiar cries of the little kitten. It was coming from somewhere very close and that was when I saw right in front of me sitting in a planter a large white box with a tiny kitten inside. He was black and white kitten barely the size of my palm. It was so helpless and didn’t look like it was in good shape. His face was very dirty and one of his eyes was shut, covered in what looked like excrement. He was extremely thin and was stumbling clumsily around in the box. He was trembling and I’m sure he was very frightened. That was when I started to panic. I’ve saved dogs in the past but I’ve never had much experience with cats let alone a baby kitten so young and weak. I immediately ran upstairs to my house, put down my laptop and things and then came back downstairs to pick up the white box. I was trying to calm the kitten down by talking gently to but I’m not sure if it understood by the tone of my voice what I was trying to convey. As I was about to enter my house, an old grandmother who was walking by noticed the kitten and asked me if I was intending to save the kitten. I wasn’t sure actually at that point what I was going to do but I answered that the kitten was probably abandoned and was roaming the streets already for many days. Turns out she was a neighbor who probably also heard the cries of the cats just like I had for the past week.
As I got upstairs back into my house, I immediately got on the phone and called my friend to ask when she could get off work and come help me with the kitten. I think I was even more scared than the little kitty at that point. My friend must have flown over to my house in a jet because she arrived in less than five minutes! We both then quickly decided that we needed to take the kitten to the vet immediately as it probably hadn’t been fed for days and needed some immediate attention. We also wanted to make sure the kitten was physically well as it could have sustained physical damage during the days it was abandoned on the streets.
We arrived at the vet and they immediately brought over some baby food and cat milk formula. They were extremely warm, caring and professional in the way they handled the little kitten. The kitten immediately began to hungrily lick and bite at the spoon containing the baby food as it probably hadn’t had anything to eat for at least a few days. How did it survive for so long? How long had it not anything to eat? Why did its mother abandon it? The kitten must have had six spoonfuls of baby formula which it devoured non-stop. The doctor then cleaned its eyes and gave the kitten some eye drops. At this point, we asked the doctor what the sex of the kitten was and he told us he believes it’s a male. The reason being, we were told, is that when cats are young their sex is difficult to determine because their sex organs are still very undeveloped and obscured. By now, the little kitten was starting to gain strength and looking a bit better already. What a difference just a little bit of food made. The nurse then gave him a warm bath because he had quite a bit of flea excrement lodged in his very thin coat of hair which was also very dirty. After the bath, the little kitten looked more like a little monkey than a cat! The nurse blow-dried the kitten to keep it from catching cold and then he was ready to go home.
After we arrived back to my house, we were both exhausted from the entire ordeal and I’m sure so was the little kitten. We looked down into the box and saw the large, round gray eyes staring right back at us. A little tired, still dirty and with a crinkled face the little guy was, nevertheless, very cute and adorable. Then all of a sudden a name popped out from my friend’s mouth, “Ma…lau…why don’t we call him Malau?”. I was like, “what…what are you talking about?” She then repeated herself and then said that Malau means “little monkey” in Cantonese. We both laughed and agreed that it was a weird, funny yet very befitting name for him. Yes, Malau is his name. Full of fight, courage and energy…Malau is ready to grow up.
Stay tuned for more updates on our little kitty, Malau. DT
