They grow up before you know it, don’t they? Kittens, I mean.

It feels like it was only yesterday when we welcomed that little black-and-orange furrball into our home. She was so small, I mean, really tiny, even for a kitten. Playful, but cautious, funny, excited and easily content. Now, all of a sudden, according to our family calendar, she’s six months old, and therefore she’s ready to get sterilised.

Although of course she did grow tremendously in the past few months, it still seems so soon to let the vet perform surgery on something the cat isn’t even aware of yet. She’s so small and vulnerable. She’s still just a kid.

***

To prove me wrong of her immaturity, she starts showing some signs of coming into heat, just days before her surgery. I recognise that particular kind of purr-meowing from a mile away and, to prevent her from turning into a monster for three continuous days, give her halve a pill of my own. Two hours later every sign of heat has gone.

“You had a taste, puss, but soon it will be gone forever,” I say, and I look into her big green eyes.
“Meow?” she replies, displaying her non-understanding, while she pokes into a play mouse with the claws of her right front paw.
I walk towards the window and stare outside. The cat follows me and hops onto the windowsill to watch the street together with me. I feel melancholic. In the back of my mind I hear Britney sing: “I’m not a girl, not yet a woman.”

***

A few days later, it’s time to put her into her travel basket. She goes in voluntarily, but puts up a fight when she realises she’s locked up. She sticks out her paws to find a spot where she can open the obstruction and tries to gnaw through the bars. I soon learned sticking your head in front of the basket in such a situation isn’t a wise response. With a stone in my stomach I drive her to the vet and drop her off.
“Bye, puss, don’t worry, I’ll pick you up this afternoon.”
She’s terrified.

That afternoon I drive our car to the vet again as early as I can possibly pick her up. And there she is: a sad, little lump of feline matter. Back in our living room I examine her belly. There’s a small slit stitched together neatly amidst a large area of bare skin. Her shaved spot makes her seem even more vulnerable. My mind automatically switches to Britney again, but I decide not to go there and push the thought away.
“You’re a woman now, puss. Yet you have already been robbed from your womanhood. What a paradox.”
“Meow…”

***

Her recovery is miraculous of course. I mean, she is a cat. And so three hours after I’d collected her and brought her back home, she has already resumed here fulltime day job of wrecking the house and running around like an out of control whirlwind. It still surprises me how cats tend to heal like nothing has ever happened to them.

Today, everything is how it should be again. We are playing a racing game on our Playstation. In the meantime, the little cat is running around, annoying our bigger cat and flying about through the house. She grabs a toy mouse, attacks a random bit of the carpet and tries to touch our virtual cars on the television screen all seemingly at the same time while running around ferociously.

“Puss, come on, I thought you’d just become a grown woman? Act your age!” I say motherly.
And then she comes over to me, and gives me the cheekiest meow I’ve ever heard and demands my attention. After some quality caressing she walks off, tail in the air, little hips swaying, ass showing, like a stubborn youngster as though she’s saying in a ‘lolcat’ manner:
“Like u cares. U plays videogames, me trashes rooms. That iz whut we does. I no cares how old we is supposed to acts. Ima gonna do however I pleasez.”

You are as old as you meow, I guess.

Column published by Cecile on Monday, April 28th, 2008.

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