Kisa's Story

Back in mid-May I posted a blog on our New Neighbors--a pair of kittens that had moved into the bush beside our back porch. They were adorable. I wanted to keep them, but my husband and I both agreed we really couldn't take both of them, and it would be good to try to keep them together. Our plan, at that time, was to try and find a home for both of them and in the mean time they could be our porch kitties--we'd feed them, and the mama kitty (and maybe hopefully eventually catch her and get her spayed), and spend time with them outside. For a week or so, things seemed to be going well. The kittens moved between the bush next to our porch and the bushes near our neighbor's porch--it was quieter over there, but our bush was more sheltered + we had food.

That plan failed, however. About 2 weeks after the first blog post about the kittens, we found out that they had both ended up on the underside of our neighbor's truck--usually parked because he only drives it about once a month to haul stuff. He had driven about 30 minutes away to cut some lady's grass, and he'd found one of the kittens playing under his truck when he went to load the lawn mower back up. He picked it up and brought it back; he let it loose back where it used to stay by his porch. At that point, we assumed we'd never see either kitten again--although we have no proof that the other kitten is permanently gone, the odds are not good for it. That was a Monday afternoon. We were sad and regretted a little not keeping them both anyways, even though we already have 3 cats and questioned how responsible it would be to take 2 more and whether we could effectively care for them. So, we formed a new plan; I honestly believe it was divine intervention that the one kitten managed to survive a 30 minute ride on the underside of a pick-up truck. My husband said if we ever saw that kitten again, we would take her.

Well a couple days later, on Thursday morning as we were loading the kids up to take them to school, we saw the kitten. She was sitting under the truck (yes the same one that she went for a ride on) mewling pitifully. I went to the edge of our yard, crouched down and called to her; she came and jumped into my lap. I picked her up, and she started purring loudly and snuggling close. I was determined to hold Shaun to his word; the kitten rode with us to drop the boys off at school. Then we came back got a cat carrier, and took her to the vets to get checked for feline leukemia, get dewormed, defleaed, and other things. She had to live in our bathroom for a little while because she had an upper-respiratory infection that could make our other cats sick, but thankfully she was otherwise healthy. She spent the first weekend at my aunt's house since we were at Animazement. It took us until the Wednesday after Animazement to name her--we went through a ton of names; some of the ones we considered included Luna, Sabrina, Mint, Sybil, Phoenix, Lemur (briefly since all our other cats are named after other rodent-ish animals), Shiva, and Imoen. Kisa was the name that seemed to suit her most.