One Lucky Kitty

On the night of the sixth, we went out on an adventure. We went to the local observatory! I have not yet written about Georgie’s birthday, but this was part of Georgie’s birthday celebrations (the fourth was too full and the fifth too cloudy). The observatory and planetarium are situated up on a hill that divides Oaxaca valley in two at this point. Actually, it is more of a ridge, barely wide enough for the road. The observatory is on a wide point in the ridge.

From the outside the observatory didn’t look like much, just two grey domes in a deserted parking lot. But on the inside—the interior was dark, with soft red light coming in from the hall, with a large telescope dominating the domed room. One end of the telescope pointed out through a slit in the ceiling. The roof could be rotated so that the slit allowed the telescope to view any part of the sky. The other end of the telescope, the viewing end, was high enough in the air so that we had to stand on a ladder to view through the lens. What we viewed through the lens was the moon! The telescope is a 30 year old, six inch diameter, refractor. Thus the image was a reverse of what was seen in the sky. The moon was in it’s first quarter, so we could only see half of it. One side was perfectly round and smooth, the other side faded into darkness. We had an amazingly sharp, crystal clear view of the craters. Each crater was in sharp focus, as if someone had taken scoops out of the moon with a serrated knife. It almost looked like the moon had suffered from really bad acne back when it was younger. It seemed like there were many craters near the bottom edge of the bright area—near the dark, night side. My dad thinks there are the same number of craters across the surface, but we could see the shadows more strongly near the separation between night and day. I Also found it unbelievable that what I was seeing as clear as a bird in the sky was actually384, 403 km away. It was easy to see why people used to worship the moon.

We had wanted to see Jupiter and Venus too, but the moon was too bright. To see any other heavenly body we needed to have come earlier, before moon got so bright and the planets were so low in the sky. We decided to come back again the next night to see Jupiter.

Coming home from the observatory, as we were walking down our callejon, we saw a white blur at the base of a wall. Without thinking, I bent down and made some “come-here-kitty” noises. Normally I wouldn’t, because street animals have fleas and worms, neither of which I want to get close to. But this kitten (my mum says around eight weeks old) was so friendly I couldn’t help but pick her up. It’s whole ribcage was rumbling with purrs of happiness. We looked up and down the alley to see if there was a home she’d come from, but couldn’t find any place open–or that she seemed attracted to. Of course we had to take her inside our patio and give her some milk. But she was too young to lap up the milk, so instead I fed her bread soaked in milk, kind of like Kitty French Toast. Even though we picked her up and cuddled her non-stop there was no end to her purring. And when we stroked her—well, she sounded as if her muffler was broken. Then we had to go to bed. So we fashioned a box for her outside. After several piteous meows, which we tried to be deaf to, she curled up in her box and went to sleep. I know that because every time I woke up in the night I peeked out through the curtains to check on her.

We were half hoping she wouldn’t be there in the morning because there was no way we could keep her. If we tried to take her home with us, not only would there be a huge amount of paperwork to fill out, but there is no way we could travel a month in a car with a kitten, as much as we wanted to. And Willow, our notoriously high-strung dog, would never have forgiven us if we came home with something that cute and cuddly. Soooo, if the kitten was there in the morning, our only hope was to try and fine her a home. We thought she must have just been abandoned the day we found her, because her fur was still clean and she wasn’t too hungry. We knew she hadn’t been born on the street because she was so well socialized—she couldn’t bear to be away from our company. Apparently, unwanted animals here are often just dumped on the street to fend for themselves. When families are struggling to feed their children, why keep an extra animal?

I woke up early in the morning: I couldn’t wait to see if the kitten was still there. She was meowing to get in. George was asleep, so I had her to myself that morning. I fed her outside, then I played with her. When I walked around getting some food for myself, she followed me like a duckling. When I sat down outside to do my math, she crawled into my lap. First she was interested in the way the pencil moved. So I got another pencil and, in between math problems, rolled it across the floor for her. After she tired of the pencil, she went after my math book, chewing on the pages. I made her stop that. Since I was wearing a sweater with a hood, with tightening strings, she went after those too. Then she fell asleep in my lap. Anytime I got up, she would follow me and whenever, wherever I sat down, she would crawl into my lap and fall asleep. If we ever do get a kitten, I hope it is like her—un-judgmental, adoring, cuddly, friendly and constantly, loudly purring. In short, a perfect kitten

Unfortunately, we had to put her outside the gate to see if she could fine her way home. We all doubted she had a home, but we still put her outside. Our landlady has a Chihuahua, a cute adorable Chihuahua. But as soon as the kitten saw it, she freaked out. I was holding the kitty in my arms, and she immediately started clawing her way up my sweater, past my face and onto my head. There she balanced, making little growly noises of distress.

Taide picked up her puppy and put it in the house. I was worried the dog would come back so I came up with a way to comfort the kitten. I was wearing a vest with a tightening waistband, so I tightened that as much as possible, zipped up the vest up partway, and stuck the kitten in there. The Chihuahua got out again and this time when the cat saw the Chihuahua, instead of climbing up, she scrunched down, hiding herself in the dark. Then I had to put her down outside the gate.

First she meowed piteously at our gate, but I went in the house, out of hearing distance. I didn’t want my heart broken any more. L

Later that day, the cat had disappeared and we assumed she had gone home. But that evening, when we went out to view Jupiter at the observatory, the kitten was back, ready to curl up in our laps as usual. Just as we were feeding the kitten our newly bought cat food, a young girl came running up and looking upset. My mum asked if the cat was hers and she said yes, and ran up the alley to her parents. After a short conference with her parents, the girl ran back to us, trying to give us the kitten as a present I was confused: why did this girl want to give us her kitten? After talking to her parents we found out that they had seen the kitten the night before and their daughter had wanted to rescue it. But they couldn’t take the kitten then and planned to return and get it later. We could tell the parents were hoping we would take the kitten, they already had three cats and two dogs. The girl, on the other hand, was happy we had said no.

So this one kitten, on the streets for less than a day, found not only one loving family, but two. It could have starved within the week, but now it will be taken care of and loved all of it’s life. Our hearts were a bit broken, but we were all pleased with the outcome of the story.

After saying goodbye to the kitten, we headed back to the observatory to see Jupiter. Jupiter looked only like a pinpoint of light to our naked eyes. With the telescope, we could see three of it’s 24 moons! They were all lined up, two moons, Jupiter, and another moon. Jupiter was blurry, apparently because the telescope was old, and because Jupiter is 630 million km away. km Good reasons for it to be blurry. Jupiter looked white, with maybe a faint rosy tinge to the edges. In the center, faintly, we could see two orange lines. It was amazing seeing something so far away appear so close.