Mama Bianca and her troubled kitten

Today for me was a real HAPPY ONAM! 

Why? Listen to the story … 

3 weeks back mama cat Bianca refused her 3 and half months old kitten Mia to come close to her to drink. Bianca was pregnant. 

When Mia was just one month old, this kitten was only bones and fur, same as Mama Bianca – both look really bad. We had been 2 months in Germany and it seemed, they didn‘t get enough to eat during our absence. By the way, Bianca is a wild cat. We know her for 3 years, while she comes into our garden to get the leftover food from us, and she listens to her name. Since recently I can softly touch her for a second, then she looks astonishingly at me. Of course, never in her life somebody had touched her in a friendly way. 

I really was worried, if they would survive. I‘ve never seen such a skinny kitten, the face so bony looked ugly – we gave it the nickname »Fledermoisel«, tiny bat! 
Also it was obvious, that both had worms. I searched for a homeo remedy and mixed it everyday among their food. Slowly they looked better and better. The swollen belly shrinked and legs became strong. 

And now, look at this pretty Mia! 
Even more after Bianca refused her kitten to come close to her, Mia became best friend with Simba-Meeyoo. They played together and even shared a bowl of rice with curd. Only his fish, Simba-Meeyoo doesn‘t allow to share. Mia got her own plate – how hungry this kitten is! 

Mia, although had spent already 3 months with us, but sleeping outside in the storing place, is still incredibly frightened and doesn‘t dare to come close to me. Sometimes I sit beside the plate with food and touch Mia while eating. Then Mia always runs away, but comes back hungrily. Once I could catch it and hold, but Mia was biting and scratching me, that I quickly gave up – bleeding! Mia is too frightened. I accepted its fear, but would have liked to hug and to cuddle it. 

One week back on the last day of August, when Bianca came as usual to get something to eat, we saw she must have given birth, but had no idea, where she hided her kitten. Next day Alexander came to me and said, 3 kitten were laying in the waste bin at the open air washing place verandah of one of the guest rooms. I rushed there. What tiny cuties. 

I took a big paperbox, in which we had put little Simba-Meeyoo once in his first days with us after his traumatic experience (see Cat Story »New life for Simba-Meeyoo«). Then I put the paperbag with the 3 kitten inside into this big box, which I placed in the niche under the basin. I covered the box partly and felt it was a safe and much better place for them. Bianca could comfortably lay there to feed them. 3 days they were happy there. 

In the night, when all windows downstairs were closed, Bianca – as she did last year – climbed up the coconut tree beside my writing room, jumped on the roof, walked on it to the other side of the house and jumped near her kitten‘s place down to the verandah.

But on the 4th day I saw her running around crying, even searching in the house and on the verandahs. I understood, something must have happened to her kitten. When I went there, the box was empty, blood spots around and ugly fleshy tiny parts near the basin. It was clear what had happened. Only hours later Bianca was sitting on top of the storing place in a big tin role: with 2 of her kitten. When she left for some time, I looked at it closer. One of the two kitten didn‘t move, which then next day was disappeared. And again next morning the remaining kitten also wasn‘t there anymore, while Bianca was walking around loudly crying, searching for her kitten. 

And she allowed Mia again to come close and even to drink. Mia must be now 4 months old – what a lucky cat! 

For us it was clear, that all of her 3 newborn kitten were dead, eaten by male cats or what ever. I assumed, probably the same thing must have happened to Mia‘s siblings, that‘s why this frighteness. 

Then today‘s Onam morning what a wonderful surprise: The one kitten was alive! Alexander saw Bianca coming from my stitching room next to kitchen, from where she can get out through the open window. I rushed to look into the big box under my stitching table, where already last year Bianca gave birth to 3 kitten, among them Simba-Meeyoo. And there was it, the brown-white spotted kitten – what a joy! 

I took some cotton cloth to make a cosy bed, cuddled it a bit, just had the eyes half open, then put it back. 

Strange to say, that this only one surviving kitten has been my favorite one from the first moment, and the only one of which I have taken photographs …

That was my Happy Onam gift today.