Mystery cat!

Not to be confused with "Mystery Pants":


(File Photo)

This morning when I woke up, a storm was finally pushing its way into Elgin. The first storm we've had in over a month. I was drowsy, especially a post-nightmare drowsy, and when I came into the kitchen to pour my bowl of cereal, I was pretty sure I'd heard a cat meowing. So much that I thought the cat might even be the in house. I opened the front door, and I said here, kitty! here kitty! and no kitty came. So I closed the door. This happened a couple of more times. I emailed James and said, are you hiding a cat in the basement? And the neighbors are going to start to think I'm crazy, opening the door every 5 minutes and calling for a cat that isn't there.

Four hours later, the storm is gone. The air is sticky again, it's the middle of the day, and I might want to go running, so I open the door to see if the air is too humid. It is, by far, but now the rain has stopped and the mewing is much louder.

I think the mews are coming from underneath the deck, but they're not. Turns out, the lily bush is mewing. I part the jungle of bushes with my hands, and a little head is poking out. A gray head of a tiny baby kitty, and he wants me to be his friend. And so I become his friend.

I got a bowl of milk, I got my camera. He wouldn't drink the milk right away, but I put it on my finger and he'd lick it off and then he eventually upgraded to the bowl, taking sips at a time. He purred like a chainsaw when I held him, and when I wasn't holding him, he mewed like a broken record.

I have no idea how old he is, but I think he's one of the kittens that Farmer Reed's cat, next door (1/2 mile down) had not to long ago. I'd thought all the kittens were dead, by the violence of a Tomcat. And if he does belong to that cat, how he made it down here, I don't know. But he found our big green bush, and he hid there from the rain, and when I'm not outside, he hides there again from whatever else he's afraid of.

He didn't seem too keen on the milk, so I decided to bring him food. I found Shoestring potato chips left over from last weekend's barbeque. (Hey. If they're good enough for Chad, they're good enough for a stray, dirty cat who is missing half his tail and lives in a bush.)

Well, it was either that or marshmallows. And the kitty seemed to like them. For a guy who weighs less than a bag of licorice, he really can't complain.

I just don't know what to do with the kitty-kitty. I left him some shoestring chips outside, which officially will make me responsible for the cat's ridiculous salt intake and high cholesterol, and I've left him some milk, but it's getting very warm very quickly. And I've pet the shit out of him (and also had to touch him to get him to eat not just because he was soft) so I don't know if the mother will take him back. But he seems old enough to fare for his own, yes? I know nothing about cats.

All I know is that when I flipped him over, I saw a tiny circle of what I think is a testicle. So I've named him Johann.