Nurture Trumps Nature

Look at those big brown eyes... and the skin
sores all over his neck. Awwww.

As I'm writing this, I'm desperately trying to make a mental list of all the good things about fostering a rescue kitten, but really all I want to do is kick him out of my room so I can go back to being a writer for half an hour and not a human climbing tree where he jumps from clingable surface to clingable surface, pretending he's a tiger or a gecko, or whatever goes on in his brain.

Humph. Well. I guess it comes with the territory.

One month ago I finally gave up my search for a snake to foster adopt (you'd think that would be easy here!), and began inquiring about kittens. In District 2 there is a veterinary hospital and animal rescue that I'd been in contact with and they had a little mangy cat come in that needed some special TLC. I told them I'd come in on Friday and we'd go from there.

From hairless rat to soft, bouncy tiger.

...Aaaaand of course I took him home. His name is Shanti (it's a stupid name for a male cat, but I told myself, no naming the pets. You can't keep them. Just cuddle with them and feed them and make sure they get healthy again, and then someone ELSE can take him home and realize what a sincerely stupid name it is for this cat).

All 40 minutes, driving 50 km/hr on my bike across the width of Saigon, with him in a kitten transport slung over my shoulder, and getting caught in my second downpour of the day, my only thought was, "Please, stupid cat, please do NOT die of pneumonia. THEY WILL NEVER GIVE ME ANOTHER." He didn't. Some days I wish he did. I may not be cut out for children, speaking of that thought. It's my first real kitten since I was in second grade, and it was a bit of a shock how much play/nuzzle time they really need, and how much typing on your computer is basically an invitation to attack and wrestle.

He apparently LOVES hard-boiled eggs and seaweed
from the convenience store. Not his normal dish.

It's not that he's a bad cat. He's just a little boy kitten, and he doesn't have anyone else to play with. Usually they foster them in pairs so that they have someone to play with and they can get socialized in the process. Shanti, however, needed to be fostered alone because he had ringworm, and they couldn't risk spreading it to the entire cat house. In the meantime, I have become his human transport, a climbing tree, a magnificent toy that whacks back, and a chew toy with a seemingly limitless amount of spots that, when bitten, will get an immediate and dramatic reaction. If you could sell me on pet shop shelves, kitten owners would buy it in droves - and maybe even sleep through the night once in a while.

The ringworm is almost all gone now - all the sores are healing correctly, his energy is up, and he's growing rapidly. He eats more than my grown cat at home ever did (WOBBLY BOB SHOUT OUT: YO WOBBLES, I MISS YOU, I HOPE YOU'RE READING THIS) and plays more than any cat I've EVER had. I always used to lament how Bob didn't do 'Cat Things' like play or jump around. No more. I now realize Bob was pretty much the perfect cat for me - enough attitude to make me laugh, just enough love to show she cared for her human.

My arm is the enemy.

I dislike waking up to him jumping off my torso at 3am to grab hold of the hanging suit and climb to the top of the door, only to start meowing and jump/fall back onto my head. I dislike having him bite my sensitive areas in the middle of the night. I dislike the way that if I have any kind of liquid in a cup not superglued to the floor, it will sooner or later (usually sooner) be knocked over. I dislike all of these things, and a hundred even more trivial things.

But. The good outweighs the bad in this case. Shanti desperately needed some attention and love, and I desperately wanted an animal around again. He cuddles with me for at least 50% of the night. He purrs while he rides around the house on my shoulder, perched there like a fuzzy tiger-parrot. If only I could get him to ask for a treat from my shoulder, it would be pretty much the greatest.

And I mean... when he looks like THIS... AWWWW

And I know that he does all these annoying things because he's grown attached to me as an owner. It's a good feeling - when it's not his sharp little fangs snake-biting (he seriously strikes like a cobra, over and over again, while clutching my forearm with front and back paws) into the webbing between my fingers, or bouncing across my laptop keyboard and activating some obscure accessibility feature that takes me 20 minutes to figure out how to turn off (Seriously, why is there a keyboard shortcut for VoiceOver!?), or upturning orange juice all over my work pants 5 minutes before I leave the house at 6:30am. These are all things I can forgive, ultimately, because he knows not what havoc he causes.

Creepy hairless things,
caught waking up.

Part of the reason I'm dealing with the annoying kitten-stuff is that Shanti won't be with me long. I've had him for almost a month, and I can only keep him (per the rescue shelter's rules) until he is four months old. At that point he will be returned to the cat house where, hopefully, someone with thick skin and forearms without nerve endings will adopt him and they'll both live happily ever after, until he dies of old age, like every cat should.

I do have the sneaking suspicious, though, that Shanti was born for trouble. He's got a wicked sense of curiosity and a penchant for playing... and if I've learned one thing from the Vietnamese children I teach that have those traits, it's that they'll find genuinely interesting ways to piss you off (he's still outside my door as I write this, crying for me to let him back in the room - not until I'm done typing, mate!).

This was literally seconds before flying
into my arms, causing me to spill a bottle
of laundry detergent all over my room.

In the meantime, I look forward to having Shanti for another three weeks. Three weeks of bouncing around the terrace, riding down to the kitchen to make noodles with me, chasing and demolishing full toilet paper rolls, and so much more (actually, maybe not that much more. I'm pretty busy and out of the house a lot. But that's stuff he couldn't get on the street, where he might have died of ringworm, lost and young. So that's good).

I encourage any expats looking for some love at home to foster an animal (from a rescue! Do not bring in animals from the streets!!) for comfort, warmth, and mutual love, if not respect or, you know, actual physical comfort. It's been a very rewarding experience and I look forward to fostering more animals in the future.

The hospital lent me a litter box, bowls, scoop, carrier, bought me my first bags of food and litter, provided weekly and bi-weekly medical baths, medicine, and shots, and generally covered all the expenses if I'd just promise to love on him a little bit. It's a pretty good deal, to be honest.

If you want to make a difference in your life, there are always animals that need special care, or just care period. Who knows, there might be one outside your door right now.

Ok, you can come in now, buddy - it's bedtime.

Goodnight, Shanti.