I think my mum may have done a little unpaid advertising for me. Somehow, word got around that I had kittens up for sale, and since then, people have been showing up at the house asking about their availability.
Clover has three kittens, and honestly, the house is already full with her and Tiger. Sometimes Tiger even brings his girlfriend over, so keeping all three kittens for myself would be a little too much.
I love these kittens dearly, though. Sometimes the thought of giving them away genuinely troubles me, but I don’t really have a choice. The one thing I am determined to do right is make sure they don’t end up with people who won’t take proper care of them.
Yesterday, a couple came asking for one of the kittens, the striped one. He’s the only male in the litter. They looked decent enough at first glance. The kind of people you could hand a kitten to, collect your money and go back inside without a second thought. Except I’d heard a few things about them.
The thing is, they’d had a cat before, and according to the rumours, they didn’t feed it properly. They were also said to beat it whenever it let a mouse escape instead of catching it. Their house supposedly had quite a few rats hiding around, and they wanted a cat, preferably a male, to come and do the job of policing them.
Now, I’m not one to make decisions based entirely on rumours, so I needed to hear something from the horse’s mouth. At least enough to figure out whether there was any truth to what I’d heard.
So I casually asked, “Have you ever had a cat before?”
The wife, who had been wearing a sunhat and dark sunglasses, immediately took off her glasses and started crying.
“Yes. Zika.”
She paused dramatically.
“Such a sweet boy. He was the most selfless cat I’ve ever known. He got hit by a car on a rainy day. We miss him.” She sobbed and leaned into her husband’s arms. He held her and gently patted her back. I just stood there, bewildered.
“Wow. That’s such a touching story,” I stuttered, trying to process what was happening. “Do you have a picture of him?”
They looked at each other. Then they looked back at me, almost as though I’d asked an insensitive question then she sobbed again. Her husband rubbed her back before turning to me, his eyebrows raised in a way that felt strangely imperious.
“We don’t. We needed to heal from the incident, and part of healing meant letting go of the pictures.”
“Oh. I see. My apologies.”
They nodded and waited. At this point, I had already mentally rejected the transaction.
First, I believed the rumours. Second, the kitten they had chosen was far too cute to let go. And third, all the kittens are still breastfeeding. I couldn’t hand over a tiny kitten and expect him to start fending for himself just because someone needed a rat catcher urgently. He isn’t ready for that. So I told them the kitten was still breastfeeding and that, since they needed one immediately, it wouldn’t work out.
They stood up. The wife wiped her clothes, adjusted her hat, and the two of them held hands as they walked away. I watched them leave.
Then, phew. I gasped and walked back inside. And guess what? All three kittens had disappeared. They had gone into hiding. I’m not saying they could smell the bad energy…But they definitely weren’t taking any chances. 😂
