The Good, The Bad and The Furry: Life with the World's Most Melancholy Cat and Other Whiskery Friends (16 page)

It was my birthday, after all.

Procuring your kitten

All proper kittens
grow on small furry trees. Some people purchase kittens from shops and supermarkets, to which the kittens are transported in cramped lorries, alongside other cute animals such as pygmy goats and puppies. Try to get your kitten straight from a furry tree if you possibly can, as it will be fresher and less likely to be bruised.

Make your kitten stand very still

When you get
your kitten home, take it out of its basket, place it on a smooth, flat surface and ask it to stand very still and not make a noise. The kitten will be very disorientated in its new environment, so if it manages to heed your advice and not move for over twenty minutes, it’s a good sign that the kitten has a stoical character and will be equipped to withstand life’s setbacks with equanimity. After ninety minutes or so, tell the kitten it can relax, and reward it with a small snack: some muesli, perhaps, or three or four organically grown leeks.

Your kitten’s first headache

Kittens are often plagued by headaches in the first three months of their lives, and can become irritable and monosyllabic as a result. Do not on any account try to treat one of your kitten’s headaches with medication. Instead, make your kitten very comfortable in a darkened room, and sing softly to it. Try, maybe, one of the early love songs of David Gates and the band Bread, or ‘Summer Breeze’ by Seals and Crofts. If your singing is up to scratch, your kitten will be cured in less than an hour, and ready for its next adventure.

Don’t waste
time in getting your kitten started on literature

Don’t make the mistake of delaying introducing your kitten to books, just because you know a good seven or eight months need to elapse before it is be able to read. Those it gravitates toward might seem inconsequential now but could serve as a useful early indicator of its future career, desires, temperament and worldview.

Kitten Baskets

In eighteenth-century
England, Kitten Baskets were seen by rural folk as a surefire way to ward off evil. A Kitten Basket would traditionally contain various bits of loose material from the owner’s old quilts and shirts, some herbs and a kitten, and would be presented to people moving to the village on the day of their arrival. The new residents would eat the herbs, keep the kitten in their front window overnight and return it to its owners in the morning, after which their house would be ‘blessed’ and delivered from future evil such as storm damage, plague, and randy wandering soldiers intent on taking the maidenheads of their daughters. The tradition of the Kitten Basket lives on in many counties, although not in Staffordshire, following the infamous Cannock Chase Kitten Basket Theft of 1864.

Slowly introduce your kitten to outdoor life

Introduce your kitten
gradually to the outdoors. Before letting it go out on its own, ease your kitten into the outdoor life it will very soon be able to enjoy by showing it carefully, realistically illustrated pictures of the outside of your house. Try also placing the kitten behind a locked window on a sunny day, standing on the other side of the window, waving to it, and pointing out exciting outdoor things such as trees, hammocks and wood pigeons.

Sleeping places your kitten will genuinely enjoy

It’s a misconception
that kittens like to sleep on blankets and jumpers. They actually much prefer to sleep in waste paper bins. Nobody is sure why this is, but some experts think it’s related to the fact that waste paper bins often contain magazines, and kittens like to read before falling asleep. Buy a waste
paper bin that’s slightly too big for your kitten, so it can grow into it. If there is no waste paper bin available, a kitten will generally compromise by sleeping on a toilet, or on the neck of a person aged between fifty-five and sixty-five.

Introducing your kitten to a cat who already lives with you

If you have
an older cat, place it outside the house, then make it stare at the kitten through a window. This might seem cruel, but will actually make the old cat re-evaluate its life – something it’s probably been putting off doing for far too long anyway – and face the future more realistically, acknowledging the limitations its age now imposes on it. This will ultimately help it to get on with the kitten on a more honest basis.