Meet Our Kitten

OK, if you're wondering who is this "cute neko" above, that's Cimol. Our Kitten at home. It's been almost 4 months since I was at home, not really sure whether Cimol is still considered a kitten. Hmm, FOUR months sure feel like more than half a year. I miss my family and home.

This is the story of Cimol, our
kitten (is a 6months old can be considered a kitten still?)

Our cat, Cepot, aged 13years old, died one day in the beginning of the year (February/March I think). I wasn't at home and I found out a month afterwards because my Mom wouldn't tell me. When I went home on New Years, Cepot was fine. Although Mom told me she almost died the previous month, I didn't believe her, how could I? She was fine!

Then I called home in March if I'm not mistaken. And I asked about Cepot in passing. When Mom told me she had died, I didn't feel anything. I didn't cry. Nothing. Even now, every time I look at my laptop, I'll see Cepot's sleeping on the same bedcover as Cimol. I can still feel her soft furs and her warmth. How can I feel sad? Well, that is until I wrote about her in my livejournal. Then I cried... She's the most intelligent cat and the tug war we used to have because she insisted on sitting on my lap while I got too hot so I wanted her off.

Well, this blog is about Cimol. So when I went home in July, there was a kitten, bravely playing with our dog Choco. Well, he doesn't need to be brave since Choco is such a gentle dog, except when you try to take his food away. Mom said that one day she was outside, feeding Choco when this scrawny kitten barely a few weeks old was meowing on top if its lung. Looking for his mother and hungry. See, at our housing complex, well in MOST areas in Indonesia, stray cats and kittens are very common but they usually are too afraid to come close to us. But this tiny scrawny kitten, came to my Mom and she fell in love.

It's amazing that Cimol survived the trip from wherever he came from because there are many dogs (although they have owners but they mostly just stray around the complex) and those dogs like to chase cats. It's the case of the deeply inbred hatred (except for Choco because he grew up among cats). And needless to say, that marks the the beginning of Cimol's life with ours.

For the first few days that I was home, every day Mom would call Cimol with different names. When I asked her, why, she said "Well, let's see which name he likes the most. If he likes it, he'll answer to it." Sometimes, it amazed me that my Mom managed to raise world-weary children like my brothers and I when she could be so innocent sometimes. Enough was enough, so I told mom to pick one name for the new kitten. She pondered for too long (yeah, I'm not a patience person) so following my chat with brother Mike, I decided "Cimol" as the new kitten's name.

Cimol is soo energetic. It's the cats that you see amusing themselves with  twig or their own tails. That's Cimol. It even plays with Choco's wagging tail, much to Choco's disgruntlement. Now, we have had cats for the past 25 years of our lives. We even took a cat with us when we moved. However, Dad had always hated cats. I remembered when I was young, even though he knew how much we loved the cats, if he caught them alone and unaware, you can bet there's going to be flying slipper or shoe or even book. Just because they dared to pass by while Dad's around. That's how much Dad HATES cats.

But that was old news. When Cimol's started to climb and chased his toys, when I play with Cimol around Dad, now, he tried to catch Cimol's attention so Cimol would play with him. It's endearing but also a bit hillarious because Dad sure doesn't know how to catch a cat's attention. His idea of how to do that was.. pats his hand on the sofa so that the kitten would look up and he keeps patting the sofa in hope that the kitten would take that as a sign to play.

That's how amazing our new kitten is... Even our old hard hearted Dad, loves him.

Cimol didn't use to sleep in the house, but thanks to my spoiling ways, right before I left, he had to sleep with me every night. Mom complained saying that I'm spoiling it too much but meh, Cimol deserves to be spoiled besides noone complains - except Mom that is.

In the picture, Cimol is about a two months old. He looked bigger and much healthier than the strays around our complex with around the same age as him. Mom said once that "this cat knows how to handle people to it's own advantage." And I said "good for him to find us as the humans to be handled," because now I can't imagine not having him at home when I go home next year.