On the perils of paying attention when driving.

Now ordinarily, paying close attention to what's around you is a Good Thing while driving, but this past weekend, some might say that I carried it a bit too far. On the way home from my daughter's apartment, I spotted a little ball of fluff cowering next to the wheel of a car parked on a street in her neighborhood. A kitten-sized ball of fluff. And in passing, it looked like it was, indeed, a very small kitten. So I turned around, and went back.

My daughter got out and checked; the kitten was alive, not apparently injured, but obviously hungry and cold (The temp was around 42F at the time.) It was also very obviously fully socialized to people; it didn't try to run away when she approached it. The people standing around a vehicle across the street stated that the kitten had been dumped, but they were vague about when. They were, however, emphatic about our being welcome to take it, and that they wanted none of it. (I wasn't surprised about the latter; the cultural bias against cats is strong in most Hispanic neighborhoods.) The kitten had a green collar with a bell, but was a bit disheveled and not in the best of shape.

Now, a lot of people would have been able to leave the little critter there. Fortunately for the kitten, and unfortunately for us, I wasn't one of them. So we brought it home and installed it in the usual isolation ward; the front bathroom. Given food (inhaled), water (ditto) and warmth, its demeanor improved immediately. But it was quite apparent that it had fleas, it was sneezing, and one eye was watering. (All of its whiskers on the same side as the watering eye also showed signs of either singeing or breakage; we're still not sure what caused that.) So we took it to the vet on Monday.

As expected, it had the usual suite of outdoor-kitten parasites plus one that we've not previously had to deal with, but at least it didn't have ringworm; meds were issued, and instructions received. Three days later, the sniffles have abated quite a bit, the kitten has developed the "I'm well fed" bulge, and it's even more demanding of cuddles than when we found it. It has shown a remarkable ability to ignore the pro-forma you're-a-stranger hisses of the other three cats, and finds the rest of the house intriguing on those occasions when we bring it out for a supervised foray.

We're pretty sure that it's got some Turkish Van in its heritage, based on the markings and the consistency of the fur; we haven't tested to see what it thinks of water yet, though that will happen at some point. We're also pretty sure, based on the timing of when it was dumped, and the fact that it had that new, bright-green collar with a bell, that this kitten was most likely a Christmas present to a child whose parents were not on board when the decision was made, and who then vetoed the gift retroactively, probably telling the kid that the kitten "ran away". They probably congratulated themselves for not having taken it to an animal shelter (where, in truth, it would not have been likely to live long), and for having instead just dumped it... in a neighborhood where its likelihood of finding a receptive new family was small.

And, of course, there's also the fact that if the postulated scenario is correct, then they lied to the kid, too.

That's all speculation, of course, but it's speculation based on decades of direct observation; I've seen this play out too often. One of our other cats came to us under similar circumstances (dumped on a neighbor's doorstep on Easter morning), so the unwelcome-holiday-gift factor is one we've seen before.

This one doesn't have a name yet, but the chances are good that it's going to end up staying with us. This is not what we'd planned, but with as much as we'll have invested in her, we're going to insist on some pretty specific requirements for anyone who's going to adopt, so we'll probably end up with our fourth.

Worse things have happened.