i'm sitting on the bathroom floor. my butt is numb. and my lap is purring. about 28 hrs ago, mike and i brought home the dirtiest, scariest kitten i'd ever seen. with a little digging around behind a dumpster and some help from our friend justin (shout out to jeanspants.blogspot.com) and his broom, we caught one of two 6-week old kittens born to a stray, who's been hanging around justin's apartment.

i first saw them monday night while we were there watching studio 60 and i knew right away that we must help them. strays can sometimes be hard to domesticate and take-in but kittens are a whole other story and usually very easy to find homes for. i'd had a few drinks and kept insisting to justin that he must catch them and put a "free to good home" ad up on craig's list. by the next day i'd already found homes for both of them (even better than Craig's list, i'd found trustworthy friends who were more than eager to open their homes).

so last night, as soon as i was out of work, mike and i headed over with a cat carrier, flashlight, and loads of food and treats. it was not an easy task, those little guys were fast! and scared and... scary! i must've jumped a mile the first time i tried to catch one and he hissed and threw up his claws at me. you would've thought a lion was attacking. anyway.. since we ended up needing the box (carrier) to catch the first one in, we didn't really have a good way to catch the second one and we also couldn't find him. so we took the one we had and headed home. we are hoping to go back again tomorrow to search for the 2nd (surely you didn't think we'd give up that easy).

when we got this little guy home he was in pretty rough shape. his hair was matted and filthy. mike gave him a bath and the fleas went crazy. there were literally hundreds of them. our hands were covered (it was actually pretty gross) as we rubbed flea shampoo on him and combed his long hair and picked out what fleas we could with tweezers. after the bath i wrapped him in a towel, dried him off and held him while my sister's boyfriend (stan the cat expert) picked off the remaining 30 fleas the shampoo had forced to his head and face. then stan cleaned out his very gross and dirty ears.



i couldn't believe how docile the little guy was.. just lying there, limp, letting us poke and prod him. he felt much better after he was all cleaned up and got some much needed rest for the night (confined to the bathroom, of course). and again all through out the day, as we were off doing festive holiday things.



and now, just over one day later, he is not even the same cat. he's done with all the hissing and is extremely cuddly and friendly (just wants to curl up and sleep in your lap, bless his little heart). we've seen him use his litter properly and he's started eating and drinking... and playing!



tomorrow he'll be checked out by the vet. he'll need shots, a de-worming, de-fleaing, ear drops and maybe treatment for a possible bladder infection. then it's off to a nice and wonderful long life of cuddling with angela in her soft warm bed... and lots of reading over her shoulder, i'm sure.

this makes me happy.