My mother decided to join me on yesterday's walk and in hindsight, she was a big help. We walked the usual route, and half way through, I heard what sounded like a cry for help. I had to search where the sound was coming from until I saw him peering out from a fence of what seemed to be a house/small office type lot. My eyes quickly scanned the situation he was in: shivering, panicking and alone with the exception of his sibling's corpse. He was squeezing through the gap to escape the pungent smell but even if he did succeed, a metre-tall drop to the sewer awaits him. If the fall won't kill him, the cold water will.
So I thought fast.
I quickly grabbed him in my hands and the old lady who lives across gave me a plastic bag to carry it home. "Carry it home", you say? Yes, I say. Because I saved a kitten.
I could not tell you how fast I ran my way back home with the abandoned kitty in my hands. The sound of it's sad meows chipped away bits of my heart and I thought, "I'm going to take good care of you." Now, I'm not the biggest feline expert but I am well aware that the kitten's mother could've been out looking for food. However, after seeing his sibling being swarmed by flies, it's hard to imagine that their mother being gone for only a few hours. It must've been days.
Isn't there something wrong with this story? There is something very wrong. Firstly, these kittens were inside someone's lot. Next to the distressed kitty, lies a plastic plate of milk. Clearly, someone within the the lot placed it there - the gaps of the fence were too small for an outsider to do it. It's likely that the kittens' mother gave birth to them there and left but the lot's owner was able to just ignore that? To the point where one of them died?
Another weird thing I notice was the reaction of the old lady that lived across from the lot. She was walking back from getting groceries when she noticed my mum and I assessing the kitten's situation. She said that "there were five of them but three died within the last few days." Isn't that so strange? She clearly knew but has done nothing about it. This was what saddened me the most.
As I was running back home with the kitten in the bag, I heard things from "why are you carrying a dirty cat" to "that is so disgusting". I was clearly labeled as, what Indonesians would say, aneh, because I was saving a kitten. Because I was saving a life, I was classed as weird. I'm sure if it was a human in need of rescuing, it would be the opposite. Or not... The doubt I have scares me.
Is it because they are afraid of responsibility? Or some commitment/association issues? Over a cat? It makes me really sad. What struck me was that I started to imagine what the little kitten was going through: the mother's abandonment, death of sibling in front his eyes, hunger, the cold... And I couldn't let it stay there. Maybe that's what the other people didn't feel... Sympathy.
Once I brought it home, my domestic helper's 3 year-old son was excited about a new critter in the house. He wasn't scared nor was he disgusted - it was just another living and breathing thing... Like us. After my mum repeatedly said how the kitten had no mother and no milk, it shook something in him. All of a sudden he burst out crying and everyone rushed out thinking the kitten scratched him or something but really, he was just sympathizing for the kitten. The exact opposite of the people I encountered.
And this is a 3 year-old boy - who can barely concise a proper sentence - feeling sad for the kitten. A boy who has hardly stepped out into the real world and with very little influence from other people, in fact. It just goes to show how much people can change you as you grow up. Mold you and shape you into society's "norms". It isn't bad but it sure isn't good, either.
I felt shunned from my own neighborhood but it's okay because I got something good out of it. I took the risk of taking him in and after only a day, Leap is looking much better.
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