Just Jack: A tale of our new kitten

This isn’t something that I blog about on Dane of War, but I am going to make an exception today and tell you all a story.

My wife’s folks own a kattepension, which translated from Danish is a boarding house for cats while their owners are on vacation. 2 days ago, someone called my in-laws after they had found a kitten on the side of the freeway in our area, thinking that they may be able to take it in. My father-in-law said that they would, so they ended up getting stuck with a kitten that was going to need a little more hands-on care than usual.

My wife and I talked about it and we agreed that there had to be a better solution. While my in-laws mean well, they didn’t really think long-term about what to do with him. We have a bit of experience with unwanted cats ourselves, having taken in Gandalf, Luke, and Kramer under various circumstances other than actual adoption. Gandalf lost his mommy at about 3 weeks old, and was near death from starvation and dehydration when we took him in at 4 weeks. Luke – well, he just “showed up” one day. Kramer‘s original owner couldn’t keep him anymore, so if we didn’t take him – he was going to get put down.

After we had lost our Sylvester on the first of this year, I really did not want to get any more cats, and neither did my wife. But she has the biggest heart of anyone I know on the planet, and we decided that someone had to do something to make sure this little thing was safe and sound. We talked to my mother-in-law and told her that if she took the kitten to the vet and if it was healthy, we would adopt it. Last night, he had his vet visit and checked out with flying colors – so now we are the owners of a brand-new kitten.

But I want to look at the circumstances surrounding his delivery to us. This kitten, who is a 3 or 4-week old male we’ve named Jack, was found alone on the side of a highway. Actually, he was found on the highway, and the people who spotted him just missed running him over. They stopped, sat him along the side of the road, and drove on for a second before they realized that he needed help.

I am of the conclusion that Jack was – probably along with the rest of his litter – abandoned right alongside the road by some heartless asshole. Barely into his first month of life, Jack was sentenced to die.

We have enough problems with feral cats in Denmark – especially in the area where I live on the mainland (referred to as “the provinces” by them fancy city-folk). Feral females are almost constantly pregnant, and it is even difficult to give house cats up for adoption. And recently there have been a lot of articles in the newspaper about house owners vilifying cats in general. They are blamed for the loss of songbirds, when the prime cause of this is destruction of habitat by humans (farming, house-building and industrial use). They are blamed for pooping in the rose bushes. They are blamed for putting dead mice at doorsteps.

Dog owners often revile cats because cats have more freedom to roam and dogs are supposed to be on a leash or because cats do not show mindless deference to their owners. They are blamed for tearing open bags of rubbish, although foxes are just as much to blame for this. A root cause of cat hatred – and of attempts to promote or incite cat hatred – is often the fact that people have contempt for what they cannot control – be it animals or other humans.

It is far easier to blame cats than for humans to modify their own behavior.

Regardless, abandoning cats – either a feral litter or a house-born litter – is abuse. Little Jack is a lucky guy, because he is just at the weening age of about 4 weeks, and he can eat and clean himself without problems. But it could have just as easily ended up going pretty badly for him. Kittens don’t know how to cross the road by themselves. They aren’t prepared to hunt and kill for food.

Please – before you think of tossing out cats like trash – stop and think. How is it that a precious life is so often treated with casual indifference or as an annoying inconvenience – or even more distressing, many times cruelly snuffed out because of selfishness?