Stay at home orders, lockdowns, masking, quarantines … Covid brought us many things and took away many things – travelling, visiting friends and relatives, someone besides one’s spouse to talk to.

To fight the feelings of isolation, we began, at the end of 2020 to look for a new member of our family! We finally found one to adopt from a rescue and we picked her up on New Year’s Eve about an hour away and brought her home. She was rescued as a small kitten from the streets with an estimated birthday at the beginning of September 2020 so she was almost 4 months old when she arrived chez nous.

What a scared little thing she was. She had been fostered, with her brother, in a loving home that had one very mature cat who was “queen of the hill” and several loud dogs. She and her brother were kept in separate quarters so they could be adopted separately. We had bought a cat carrier and masked up and left the carrier on the porch and the foster mom took the carrier into the house and returned with our little girl! We put her in the car and then drove about an hour to home.

We put her, her litter box and her food and water bowls in a spare room and closed the door so that she was not overwhelmed with the move or the freedom – and we would not have to look in every nook and cranny to find her! She spent most of the first few days hiding under a dresser in the room but eventually crawled into the doll’s cradle where there was a hot water bottle and I found her asleep there.

We slowly allowed her access to the rest of the house – initially the first floor where she would hide smack in the middle under a bed or the couch or a dresser. I made sure to find her and pick her up several times a day for a cuddle and pat where she soon proved to purr like a motorboat. It took about a month or so but she soon got used to us and allowed us to be her “people”. Her litter box eventually found a home in the basement while her food bowls went to the kitchen. She certainly makes her food preferences clear: we had to promise the rescue that she would get only wet food with perhaps a “side” of kibble and we have kept that promise. She likes “pate” style food (forget chunks or gravy!) and likes beef, chicken and turkey and definitely refuses to eat fish or seafood in any form! She likes water to drink and kibble on the side. Best of all, the kibble she likes is made in Canada and has anti-hairball stuff in with it. If she does not like the main course (like when we tried her on various formulations) she will eat the kibble instead! She also eats it between meals when her wet food is gone.

How did she get her name? Well, I had a cat – “Punkin” that I got in 1977 from the SPCA and that I adored. She was a tortoiseshell and bright as a button. When we lived in the country she was a great mouser and, unfortunately, in pursuit of mice she one day was in a bit of a car accident: not finding her as I came home I searched the house for her and eventually found her huddled on the cistern with obvious injuries. She must have streaked into the house and gone to lick her wounds earlier in the day. Got her to the vet, stitched up and she survived for another 5 years but obviously she had kidney damage and she passed away from kidney failure in 1987. I always said if I got another cat I would name her (definitely a girl but fixed) Kitu shortened from “Punkie Two”. Kitu started life named Maddie but that does not sound like a cat’s name – not that Kitu appears to recognize her name! She is more likely to answer to “good girl” than Kitu.

One of the toys the foster mom sent along with Kitu when we picked her up was a spring. Made of plastic, our house is scattered with them. You can step on them and they go flat and don’t trip you up like many balls and other toys you can have for a cat. And, if that cat is Kitu, you can toss the spring along the concrete floor in the unfinished half of the basement and she will happily chase it, bat it around and then bring it back to you to do it again. Great exercise for her and fun for us!

She also likes to crawl up under the quilts on our beds and have a good long warm snooze!

And, she chooses mostly to be my cat (as opposed to Sahib’s) and follows me around the house and often will curl up for a nap nearby – where she is right now while I have written this!

She has brought joy and comfort into our lives and we are very happy we chose to adopt her!