I met Joaquin, my furry little cat-boy, in October 2003 in Fresno, California.  I was in Fresno for a deposition of a man dying of mesothelioma.  The man was in very poor shape; he wasn’t hospitalized, but he was in a wheel chair and on oxygen.  Because of his extremely poor health he could not take the stress of being deposed for more than a couple of hours a day.  The firm for which I worked didn’t supply us with laptop computers, or have a network that functioned outside the office, so I didn’t have much work to do.

Consequently, I had a lot of free time to explore the wonders of Fresno.  Well, I would have if Fresno had any wonders.

Being in the Central Valley Fresno tends to be almost as warm at night as it is during the day – no ocean breezes to cool it down.  When I was there it was extremely pleasant both during the days and in the evenings.

One evening I stocked up on prepared foods from Whole Foods.  I then stopped in a Long’s Drugs for something and asked the woman who checked me out where I could go for a picnic.  It was so warm and nice I wanted to enjoy the weather while I ate.  The woman said, “Oh no, honey, you don’t want to do that.”  She told me it was too dangerous for me to go to a grassy park well before sundown by myself.  That sucked.

I went back to my hotel.  The San Joaquin Hotel had an interior courtyard where the pool and hot tub were.  I stupidly had not brought a swim suit.  I ended up picnicking by the pool.  After the sun went down and I could no longer read, I went to my hotel room.

I had been reading in my hotel room for a while when I heard a noise in the courtyard.  I opened my door and saw a tiny little fluffy kitten.  Ooooooh!  I grabbed the little thing.  It continued to mew, rather loudly.

I held the kitten, which was all fuzz and eyes, close.  It was very diminutive – it fit in the palm of my hand.  It was shaking and weak.

It was damn cute.  So little.  I realized that it must have gotten separated from its mama somehow and that it needed her still.  I wrapped the kitten in a towel and put him outside.  Next to him I placed some chicken that was left over from my dinner.  I figured the kitten’s mama would smell the chicken and come running and notice that her baby was there.  I hoped she wouldn’t reject the kitten because I had touched it because it clearly still needed its mama for nourishment.

After a while I checked the spot where I had left the kitten and the chicken.  I was hoping to see nothing but a towel, which would mean the mama got some food and picked up her kid.

Instead, I saw the little kitten wolfing down the chicken.  Oh!  He was already weaned.  And there was no mama cat in sight.

I had been wanting a cat for a while.  Our previous apartment was too small at about 425 square feet for my husband and I, our dog Otter, and a cat, so I didn’t push the subject.  But we had recently moved into a place over twice the size where there was room to have a kitty litter box in a place where Otter could not get into it (dogs really are nasty at times).

As I realized that the kitten no longer needed his birth mama since he was eating solid food, and that I could take this little, tiny, fluffy thing home, the kitten was eating and getting its strength up.  While I had easily picked it up when I first heard it mewing outside my hotel room, now that it had eaten, it wanted to get the fuck away from me.  It ran off.

I followed.  It was dark and the little thing was mostly black so I had trouble seeing it.  I went to the hotel’s front desk where I borrowed a flashlight.  I went to the last place I saw the kitten go and looked all around.

I feared that I had lost the kitten when I saw its eyes glowing in the flashlight’s beam.  It was under the hotel’s Dumpster.  It was clearly scared because it was hunched down as far away from me as it could get.  I wanted that damn kitten!

In order to get it out from under the Dumpster I had to scare the little thing more, so it would try to make a run for it, thereby allowing me to snatch  it up.  It was a kitten so it did not yet have the speed and coordination to get away from me once I was determined to get it.

Finally, I cornered the little thing and grabbed it.  I never saw its mama or any other kittens.  I put it in my hotel room and then returned the flashlight to the front desk.  I told the attendant that I was keeping a kitten I had just found.  The attendant clearly thought I was nuts.

Back in my room the little thing had tried to hide in a corner.  It was so tiny.  It also continued to mew.  Loudly.  I tried to comfort it.  I put out water and more chicken.

When I went to bed I wrapped it in a towel and put it on the pillow next to me.  The kitten stayed there the whole night.  I feel only slightly bad that I let it sleep on the bed when it was absolutely covered in fleas.

The kitten was so scared that I didn’t want to further traumatize it by trying to remove any of the fleas that could easily be seen crawling on the kitten wherever its fur was white, on it’s neck, belly, and feet.  I also didn’t check on the sex of the kitten.

The next day I had to work so I left him in the room and put the do not disturb sign on the door.  The deposition was miserable, but the weather continued to be nice.

I drove from Fresno to San Francisco with the kitten in my lap.  Anyone who has shared a car with a cat knows it is quite unusual that the kitten simply sat in my lap over the course of a nearly two hundred miles.

I swear.  True story.

[To be continued ….]

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