I picked up my tabby cat Twelve on September 12. I was leaving work at my part-time job and saw a woman looking for empty water bottles in a garbage tricycle at the market. Suddenly, she pulled out a small thing with claws from the tricycle. I thought it was a dead kitten, so I was stunned for a moment and wanted to take a look. When I went over, I found that it was a litter of living kittens that had been thrown into the garbage truck.
They were covered in garbage, vegetable soup, and oil, and were smelly and dirty. (Why it was not the mother cat’s nest for her kittens? Because the truck was cleaned every day, the mother cat would basically not leave the kittens in such an unsafe place. Moreover, the kittens’ eyes were open, so it was very likely that they were abandoned by their owners.) There were two orange and white kittens, one of which was tabby. It looked like it had just opened its eyes. It was very thin, with many black spots mixed in its fur, and it couldn’t even crawl steadily. Because I was still a student, my financial conditions and energy were really limited. I could only keep one at most. I hoped that the woman could keep the other two orange kittens. I said to the grandmother, “Grandma, I’ll take one home and try to see if I can keep it alive.”
It looked like this when I got home .
I had never had any experience raising a cat, so I searched Zhihu and Baidu like crazy, asking how to keep stray cats and kittens. I didn’t even care what breed it was in the two weeks after I brought it home. I just felt that this little life was destined to be with me, and since I brought it home, I had to take responsibility and keep it alive to the best of my ability.
I took it to the veterinary hospital for a checkup that afternoon. It was the first time I knew that pet supplies and illnesses were as expensive as those of humans, but I felt that I could accept it. I checked it for feline plague, took its temperature, and did a simple dry cleaning. When the pet store owner recommended milk powder to me, he said, “I recommend you buy this affordable one. There’s no need for other expensive ones. The nutrition is not very low, and the cat is too small. It’s likely that it won’t make it, so it’s a waste of money.” I thought it was right, so I bought a medium-priced one that cost about 30-40 yuan, but I forgot the exact amount. I bought a milk bottle. The test results came out, except that the kitten’s fur was wet with vegetable soup and oil and its body temperature was low, everything else was normal. After dry cleaning, the body finally stopped smelling, and I took it home.
At that time, there were only filter cotton and express boxes for my fish at home, so I made a simple nest with pillowcases. I also saw on the Internet that kittens are very easy to catch cold and have no antibodies, so I put a small thermos in it. I went back and made milk powder for it according to the measurement on the milk powder box. After boiling mineral water, I didn’t have a thermometer, so I used my teacup to mix hot and cold, and tasted the temperature. When I felt it was about right, I poured 20 ml into it with a small funnel, but basically it ate 4-5 ml each time. I had to go to class during the day, and basically fed it 4-5 times, getting up early, going home at noon, before taking a nap, and coming back at night, before going to bed.
The people at the pet hospital told me that kittens can’t defecate by themselves, so I bit the bullet and went online to learn. Who knew that the kittens were always constipated in the first two weeks and only drank milk. When I went back at night, I would occasionally see the “surprises” it gave me in the nest… So I bought pet probiotics for it and added one-fifth of a small bag to its milk, and it gradually got better. But I really have never experienced using a cotton swab dipped in warm water to make it defecate… Every time it urinates and defecates in the nest… or when it is let out to play, it urinates and defecates anywhere! Later, my classmate gave me a fairly large cage, saying that it used to keep hamsters. After I cleaned it up and moved Twelve in, I found that its head could come out from the gap…
In order to prevent it from running out because it was too cold or not noticed by others, I later found a big box to prevent it from running out, and glued the four sides together. In this way, I only let it out every time I go home. You can see that the cat is in a different state, much more energetic, and its skinny belly has gradually taken shape.
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