The Coming of Jayne

The Cunningham house is a big magnet. One, in particular, that seems to attract animals. Hence why we've had so many over the years and why sometimes our neighbors' animals like to hang around. All of us were reminded of it this last Sunday.

Sunday morning started off like any other. Dad woke us up, and we had our usual breakfast of eggs, sausage, and smoothie. Then we all began getting ready for church. I was doing my hair when someone (I believe it was Seth) suddenly announced that a little kitten was on our porch. Curious, I went outside. Indeed, it was a kitten. A rather tiny one. At minimum I guessed it was about six weeks old. It was skittish and rather vocal, going round and round the porch crying. However, we had to go, and we figured that it would probably wander off by the time we got home.

We were wrong.

We came home, and the kitten was sleeping on the porch. It saw that we had arrived and resumed its crying. We figured that the kitten smelled Pooky's food (we keep his food on the table to keep other critters from getting into it) and that was why it hadn't left. Taking pity on it, we put it on the table. The kitten immediately began to chow down like it hadn't eaten in several days. Afterwards, it checked us out, sniffing us and becoming less skittish. I noticed that the kitten felt awfully thin, a sign of recent malnourishment, and there was a debate over the kitten's gender.

On Monday, we bought some kitten food for the kitten, and it seems to be doing rather well. It doesn't feel as thin anymore, and he's becoming more active, moving around and being less vocal (unless he's hungry). Dad has forbidden us from making it into an inside cat, so the kitten stays on the porch, where we feed it and give it water. And we gave it a bath and some treatment for both fleas and worms; it seems otherwise healthy. The kitten is also quite the purring machine. He loves to be picked up and held, and he is definitely a people cat. Whenever we go outside, he likes to come up to us and get some attention.

Mandy has fallen quite in love with the kitten. Despite her own dislikes of some of our own beasts, she is completely enamored. At first, she and Ben were going to adopt it, but circumstances have changed and so that won't happen. Still, Mandy loves him, and it's cute to see her holding him.

Throughout the week, we debated the kitten's name. Most of the problem stemmed from the fact that we weren't sure about a gender. To solve that problem, we picked a gender-neutral name: Jayne (named after Jayne from the TV show "Firefly"). We now think Jayne is a boy, but we're not absolutely positive. We probably won't be for a few more weeks.

So now we're back up to six cats.