The endless joys of motherhood!

Havana is a tabby stray — with an unusual coat colour and pattern — who came to our garden last fall. She was pregnant at the time and her pregnancy took longer than usual — which got me worried for a bit — before she disappeared to deliver. When her kitten was a few months old, she brought him in with her to feed. And like many first-time young mothers, she managed to lose him somewhere — never to be seen again!

Almost a year later, she got pregnant again and delivered ten days before Eid. This time, she had two and brought them straight to our doorstep. I noticed that she was only feeding one and ignoring the other, so I went to push him closer to her to feed.

Havana didn’t seem too convinced by the idea of having to take care of two instead of one like last time. She decided to be practical about it: taking one and leaving the other behind.

Being a naïve human being, I trusted that her mothering instinct would bring her back and watched over the second one for half an hour. She didn’t show up and I had to take the day-old kitten in and feed it. The next day, I saw her eating with the rest of the cats and went out with the box that had her sleeping offspring. She sniffed it and gave me a funny look, before running away! I ran after her praying that she’d change her mind as taking care of new-borns isn’t really my thing. She hid in the neighbour’s house and I was stuck with the kitten for the next few days.

Anyhow, the vet guided me on how to take care of a kitten at that age: keep it warm and well fed all the time. I decided to call it Arafa as it was Hajj time and I wasn’t sure of its sex (the name worked for both). A week later — on Eid day precisely — Havana decided to dump her second one in my garden early morning. The helper hid him in his room, as he was being attacked by other cats and had a wound on his neck. Besides, he had the flu and was badly dehydrated. He died the next day despite my efforts to help him. As for Arafa, on the eighth day she developed a painful infection around the tail area and eventually stopped eating. She died peacefully on the tenth day.

Three days later while heading outside to feed the cats, I was welcomed by the sight of an unusually quiet two weeks old kitten left at my doorstep (again!).

Still being my naïve self, I believed that the mother might return to take her as it wasn’t likely for a kitten to be left alone at this age. I placed her in a carrier and we both waited to hear the mother calling for her. As usual I was wrong.

The kitten was obviously abandoned by a human being. Now I was stuck with a tortoiseshell kitten — the natural-born psycho cats (the real reason behind her being ditched). I called her Najma; like a star she’d fallen from somewhere and landed at my doorstep! I’ve been taking care of her for the past two weeks.

My hands smell of kitten milk the whole time and the bathroom floor is a swamp of her urine. The funny thing is that she gets so competitive while feeding — pulling the bottle fiercely towards her and scratching me on the way — although she’s alone (told you she’s a psycho!). Ah, the endless joys of motherhood!

Rasha al Raisi is a certified skills trainer and the author of: The World According to Bahja. rashabooks@yahoo.com