The Adventure of the Feline Friend
In which I get a new flatmate...
After a difficult few months, I began to think I should do something for me. I’ve spent three and a half years now living on my own and it has many, many benefits but sometimes it can feel a bit lonely. When my mental health was fluctuating, all I had to come home to were some plants and they weren’t providing me with much feedback no matter how much I talked to them. It was time to get a cat.
I’ve always grown up with cats. My parents had a one-year-old cat when I was born and rather than being upset about the presence of a new baby, she seemed to love me. My parents often speculated that she believed I was her own child. Whenever I cried as a baby she would come and sit next to me until I stopped crying. As I grew up we had retained a special relationship and she saw me through very nearly my whole childhood, dying at the ripe old age of 18. We had other cats too who provided such much joy to the family from the stray my Grandad found who made the entire neighbourhood fall in love with him to the timid cat who was terrified of everything that she couldn’t eat. Each cat brought so much personality and so much love.
When I moved into my flat the possibility of getting my own cat had suddenly arrived but there always seemed to be a reason it couldn’t happen. Initially, I was sorting the flat out, then I was doing my teacher training and so on. But this year I finally had no excuse and so it was kitten time. In an ideal world, I’d get a rescued kitten but this isn’t always the quickest process and I had a strict timeframe. I needed to be able to move the kitten into my flat as early into the summer holidays as possible so that it would be settled by the time I went back to work. Every now and then as summer approached I did a little search online and eventually up popped a litter where the timing was perfect. Messages were exchanged and suddenly I had committed.
I imagine what I felt in the weeks and days before picking up the kitten was a fraction of the feeling expectant parents must feel. Huge amounts of excitement but also a sense of fear. I can barely look after myself, how could I keep a baby animal alive? I tried to rationalise that I am able to manage a class of children with autism so a cat should really be quite easy.
Finally, the day arrived and I headed off to pick up my new flatmate. I was prepared to walk away if I had concerns about the house he was born in but I could tell immediately it was a good home. The mother looked very healthy and the best sign was the children who were so friendly and sad that the kitten would be leaving them. A few minutes suddenly I had sole responsibility for an eight-week-old kitten.
After some debate about names, I decided to name him Logan after watching Deadpool and Wolverine. Logan is Wolverine’s name and this seemed appropriate somehow for a cat whilst also not being a common human name, especially here in the UK. I opened the box in my living room and Logan trotted out like it was the most normal thing in the world. Some kittens are very timid but Logan is not. He was a little wary but after half an hour he’d eaten some food and had fallen asleep on my lap.
I was naturally hoping a bond would form but Logan seemed to take to me very quickly. Perhaps it was because he was so young when I got him but he immediately showed affection for me. He followed me around wherever I went in the flat and slept wherever I was sat or next to me in bed. He seems to like nothing more than climbing up onto my chest, licking my nose and then falling asleep there.
What I perhaps hadn’t anticipated was how much work a young kitten would be. It’s like having a baby, especially to start with. Logan is into everything- I’d already moved various items to make the flat safe for him but within days I’d moved most of my furniture and had to buy protective sheathing to cover the electrical wires because he kept biting them. When he falls asleep I end up sneaking around trying not to wake him up, realising that moment is an opportunity to do something without it being battered at by tiny paws. One creak of a floorboard though and he is suddenly sat right next to me.
For the first few weeks, Logan only had two moods. One of those was sleeping which he did for the majority of the time, usually curled up close to me. The other was mischievous mode where he climbs on things, plays with toys and taps anything he can see in the hope it might become a game. These two modes still exist but a third mode has developed in the last week or so which I like to call ‘gremlin mode’. When he gets really hyper, Logan will pin back his years, run with his tail stuck in the air and jump at my feet or hands and try to bite them. Fortunately, his mouth is tiny and his kitten teeth are not very sharp so this is not really a huge issue.
I’m conscious that come September I will be back at work teaching full-time and so I have had to work on preparing Logan for that. After being around a lot the first week I began to build up the amount of time I went out for. I did worry about this to start with but it soon became clear that Logan didn’t appear to be at all stressed; I could see him fast asleep on his tower from outside. I am still gradually building up the time I am not in and will continue to do so as the term starts, making sure I leave work early and take anything I need to do home.
Coming back home though has suddenly become a particularly lovely experience. Once Logan has woken up he comes bounding over to me and is soon purring loudly and snuggling me. Due to all the children at his birth house, he was used to being cuddled and seems to actively seek it out. He is already everything I could wish for in a cat, providing endless entertainment and with seemingly endless amounts of love to give.
He’s already grown quite a bit in the nearly four weeks he’s been with me and he’s just beginning to show the first signs of independence- whilst he is usually in the room with me he does go off to other places and does his own thing or sleep. I’m pleased that he seems really happy and I hope that I have been able to provide a good home for him. I’m looking forward to seeing him grow and develop further and there’s lots to look forward to, not least helping him to explore the great outdoors once he has had all his vaccinations. It’s been a very quiet summer with me mostly hanging out with Logan but it has been the best summer I’ve had in a long while.
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