LoLo loves her Kitty...

Today I read a post that really warmed and touched my heart. I was crying before I was even done reading. Someone has shared the life story of a cat that his family adopted -reluctantly at first, as it's usually the case- after he found it as a kitty, sick and half blind. The kitty, who lived 19 happy years, died today. And my love went to this complete stranger because I can imagine how a heart can break in that situation. That beautiful story has finally given me the inspiration for my own very first post.





I love kitties, period. They're irrisistably cuddly and cute; so soft and fluffy... I can waste whole hours looking at cute photos of cats. When I was little we were never allowed animals in the house; we did have some fish and also a couple of terrapins that lived in my sisters' room. But, let's face it: they're about as fun as watching grass grow. I remember once, I must have been around 15, someone in the park was giving little kitties away, so I picked a tiny black one and rushed home. I pleaded and I begged - I thought my mum was almost sold on the idea, but then the kitty peed on my jeans, point at which all the pleading and begging went out of the window and a "get that thing out of the house" ensued, so I had to return the little furball. After that, I never tried again.






Now that I'm older, I don't have to fight with my mother about having animals anymore, but there's always landlords, and somehow they're worse. This year I thought "enough!" and I visited my local animal shelter. They do such a remarkable job... When we went I could not really make up my mind, I would have taken them all home. But at some point, one that had been quietly lying on her bed and simply staring, calmly got to her little paws, walked to the cage door, clung to it with her little claws and gently meowed at me. And, in that very instant, I was a goner. "Claudia", as they'd named her at the shelter, was a three month old white kitty is a couple of oddly placed patches of different colours: brown and stripey black and gray. (I have since discovered that the pattern on her fur is what gives them the name "Calico Cats", "Tortoiseshell cats" or "Chatte d'Espagne" in Canada... how appropriate, since Spain is where she is from!). That lovely and soft kitty fur was, however, covered in little marks from ringworm -dermatophytosis- especially on her little nose and paws. I was given the option to keep her in the shelter while she was being treated... but I couldn't bring myself to leave her there. I brought it home and treated her myself. Thanks to great input from my lovely and dearest Belgian friend, I decided to call her Ayla. Here comes a little secret: the day I brought her home, she was happily snoozing on the sofa when I returned from work. I crouched down beside her and I couldn't really take in how beautiful she was, how lucky I was to call her mine... and tears started rolling down my cheeks.

She turned out to be quite a handful and really playful, despite how quiet she had seemed at the shelter. She was a mess when doing her stuff in the litter box -still is. She isn't very agile and graceful as cats are supposed to be, but we're working on that. She's thrown herself down from the first floor window to the ground, she's planted her face on my terrace door trying to jump at birds and pigeons, she's fallen off the table numerous times, she sits and lies down on my chest while I'm sleeping, she crawls under the duvet and curls up against me, she licks my face, she taps the pen I'm writing with, she lies on the clothes I'm folding on laundry day, she chases the mop when I'm cleaning, she sleeps on my desk and occasionally kicks the keyboard off trying to find more room to say "look at me, aren't I cute?! why aren't you petting me yet?".  I look at her mesmerised and lose track of time. I love her so much and I can't think of life without her now... and it's only been four months.