Katch Kitten
Zoey Simpson
When I woke up on a chilly fall Tuesday this year, I didn't expect to find a frog dead on the kitchen floor, or find a two-month-old kitten later that day. What I did expect was to play a second volleyball game against the Khan Lab team, but that ended up not happening.
On this chilly fall Tuesday, it seemed like just a normal morning, until I heard my dad yelling, “Is it real?” I thought he had seen a bug. I ran into the kitchen and saw what looked like a rubber frog. My dad picked it up and said, as calm as he could, “It’s real.” Immediately, I panicked. My dad quickly washed her off, while I ran into the living room screaming. Suddenly, she jumped out of my dad’s hands. We hastily prepared her a bowl of spring water so that she could stay hydrated. She was very dry, but she thrashed around and swam a little bit. Turns out, she was still alive. I decided to skip the volleyball game because I wanted to stay with her in case she got better. When I got in my dad’s car at dismissal, I was immediately worried about her.
“You’re not going to your game?” my dad asked, surprised.
“I don’t feel like it today. How’s my frog doing?” I asked.
“She’s not doing too good. She could still be alive but the last time I saw her move was a few hours ago.”
“Oh.” I stared out the window the rest of the way home, and when I got home from school that day she had died.
Depressed, I sat in the living room, wondering if we could get a new frog or a new pet. Just then, my mom’s phone rang, and she picked it up. It was my dad. He told her that he was in the front yard, and a kitten had run under the neighbor’s car. My mom sounded shocked, and at first I thought that something was wrong, that someone had died, or that another bad thing happened on this already terrible day. I did not expect what my mom was about to say.
My mom ran to the window and looked out. She whispered to us, “Your dad found a kitten under a car, and he’s trying to get it out!” My sister and I put on our shoes and went excitedly over to the car. Our dad shushed us, and we crouched down next to the car, hands and knees on the bumpy black gravel street. We waited for a while. The kitten had climbed up through the bottom of the car and into the hood. We saw his tail move a few times as he adjusted his position, but eventually he climbed too far up. We put cat food under the car, hoping he would come out and eat it, as he most likely hadn’t had food in a while. The smell of car oil was strong and thick, and then our neighbor came out of his house, confused. We apologized for the inconvenience and asked him if he could pop the hood. I crouched behind the car, waiting in case the kitten came my way. When the hood was lifted, the kitten jumped out at my dad. I still remember his scream.
Panicked, I sprang up and started pursuing the kitten. He ran into one of our neighbor’s bushes. I stalked around on the grass, worried that I had lost him. Then, looking at the bushes, I saw his beautiful hazel eyes and his matted yellow-brown striped, tortoise-shell fur, and as we looked at each other, I thought, “I’ve already lost one pet today, and I’m not about to lose another.” I took one step forward, and he must’ve sensed what I was about to do, because he suddenly darted into the yard of another neighbor. I ran faster than I had ever run before, but before I could catch up with him, he had run into a bush and was surrounded. My dad and my sister Ava were on one side, my mom on the other, and my neighbor was at the front. The kitten tried to sneak out but he couldn’t. We closed in on him, but then saw the yellow flash disappear under our neighbor's gate, which led to their backyard.
From there, it was chaotic. I flung open the gate, followed by my family, yelling our apologies, and we stood in the middle of the concrete slab that was their backyard. The aforementioned neighbor’s wife just stared through the back glass door, and I smiled at her and turned back. Suddenly I saw a yellow and brown tail, and so did my family. He was hiding in the only plants in the entire yard, which were the vines crawling up the fence. As we tried to grab him, all yelling, he ran towards the other fence. I was terrified. I was so sure that he could escape, but unlike the other gate, the gap was too small. He couldn’t crawl under it. He just backed up and started hissing.
“Grab him!” my dad yelled.
“I can’t! He’s gonna bite me!” I cried. The kitten hissed and hissed. “He’s still hissing! If I pick him up he’ll attack me!” My dad groaned and I stepped out of the way as he picked up the still hissing kitten. “Be careful!” I called, smiling. Surprisingly, the kitten stopped hissing pretty much as soon as my dad picked him up. I walked behind my dad back to our house across the street, thinking that if I had gone to that volleyball game, we wouldn’t have found the kitten.
After we caught him, we kept him in our bathroom with food, water and blankets overnight, then took him to the vet the next morning. The vet said that he would have to stay there for a week, and he ended up staying two days longer because he had to get neutered. When he came home, he was very scared, and he still is, but he’s getting better.
If I was him, surrounded by huge giants, just a few weeks after being separated from my mother, I would be terrified. I didn’t want him to hurt himself, but there were so many dangerous things around us. We live close to a busy street that leads onto the freeway, and all he had to do was run out of the neighborhood into the street, and he could die. Alternatively, he could’ve hurt himself on so many things, like glass, or eaten a cigarette butt or a poisonous plant, which we have a surprising amount of in our neighborhood. I’m glad that we got to him first.
Now, he gets along really well with our other cats, Star and Comet. His big sister Lucy died shortly after we found him, but he acts a lot like her. We named him Milford, which is a reference to Arrested Development, in which Milford Academy men are neither seen nor heard, which is Milford in a nutshell. We often find him sleeping, sitting or playing with his brothers. They have a big cloth tent that they like to play with, jumping on the outside and sneak-attacking each other. They play on the cat tree, sit on the windowsill and meow at birds out the window, sleep in baskets of laundry, and guard each other from terrors like our 15-year-old, completely deaf and blind dog, Charlie, who basically just wanders aimlessly.
I’m so glad that we found him. I don’t want to think about what could’ve happened to him, but I know that there’s a very small chance that he would still be alive today. If I had gone to that volleyball game, he might be dead by now, and definitely still on the street. Not many people put so much work into catching a stray cat.
He’s such a special kitten. He’s polydactyl, which means that he has extra toes, two extra on each of his front feet and one extra toe on his back feet, which is more than normal polydactyl cats have. He also has a limp tail. He had really bad diarrhea for the first few weeks we had him. He’s been a challenge, but we love him and he has two new brothers who he adores. He was really hard to catch but I’m so glad we caught him.
If you find a stray animal, you should try to rescue it, whether that’s catching it yourself or calling Animal Control if it seems dangerous. It might not seem important to you, but you could determine whether it lives or dies. Milford made me realize that you can always make a difference in someone’s life, animal or human. We saved Milford’s life and he changed ours. Milford will always be my miracle cat.
