We have adopted a tiger.
By tiger, I mean a 3-week-old abandoned barn kitten, of course. We’re not big cat people, but we couldn’t let the little thing starve to death. So we took her in.
Aw, isn’t she cute? Calm? But get ready…..
I scooted to the pet store for a small animal bottle. When the clerk said, ‘uh, oh,” I should have realized that was an early alert.
She took to the bottle right away. The kitten, not the clerk. Hang with me here.
We named her Panda because she was black and white. And it sounded like a cute, calm name.
The first week, after rescuing the kitten from starvation and the elements, I fed her several times a day, and she’d purr as I held her. Well, she’d purr as she stared deeply into my eyes before biting the end of my nose. So cute.
I’m trying to learn kitten psychology and have since discovered that kittens are really micro-lions. They hunt. They attack anything that moves. They have teeth like needles. Cute.
But I have questions. Panda is now 9 weeks old, meaning she’s big enough to run up my leg, over my shoulder, and on to the top of my head where she sits down and bites my skull. I guess I look like prey.
Panda lurks behind a half-closed door, body pressed low to the ground, and leaps onto my ankle, which probably looks like a giraffe leg to her, sinking her teeth deep into my bone. Brave little hunter.
Apparently, an empty toilet paper roll resembles a T-bone steak based on how she prowls around it. I’m not sure what that says about my ankle.
And there was that dangerous shallow box on the floor by the trash can. She leaped into the box, and it moved, so she kept batting it and biting the edge. Better that box than my head, I thought, so I settled in to watch. After the batting and biting stopped, she laid down in the box and started purring. Is that box prey or a bed? I’m trying to learn.
Panda can spring onto our bed with a single bound, which must be necessary for a professional hunter. I want to understand why hunters need to hurdle onto a bed, but, for now, I’m staying with the mountain-climber explanation: because it is there.
From calm to this… in an instant. Look out, earlobes! There may be tooth marks there soon.
She kinda miscalculated one of her bed leaps, though, running into the side of the mattress and ricocheting back to the floor. She got up and looked as nonchalant as I did that time I nearly fell on the ice. Nobody was looking, right?
I’ve made the mistake of wearing shorts in my own home, which means my legs now have micro-slashes thanks to our tiger who knows the best way to the top of my head is up my leg, whether I’m wearing jeans or not.
Friends want to stroke her head. “Ah, isn’t she sweet?” they coo.
Well, not always. They’ve left our house with apologies and a fingertip missing. It’s tough to pet a hunter.
We named her Panda but, watching her in action the last few weeks, I’m wondering if she’d be better off named Panther.
