The Kitties in My Hood

A few months ago a tiny cute black and white kitty had three little kittens. They were so adorable. One black and white like his mother, the other two grey and black striped with white tummies and feet. They were easily the cutest things on the block. People young and old would stop and watch them play together in the tall grass where they spent most of their days.

I would always stop by, chat with them (you'd be surprised how many cats here understand English), pet them and see what they were up to. They were certainly a topic of conversation along the path.

Because it's summer, I have been traveling back and forth, visiting linkmates, Spanish camp, Crimea and Croatia...and when I came back from Croatia I noticed that two kittens were gone. I had a visitor briefly and commented on this to her (she had met all three on an earlier visit) and made the association that maybe people took the other two kitties because they were male.

Here, no one spays or neuters their animals, hence, more kittens, puppies, dogs, and cats than you know what to do with. No one would want to be stuck with more kittens in a few months, as even house pets are not spayed or neutered. Female kitties get kitty birth control, which I think is also some part Valium to get them to calm down. Anyway, I was thinking how awful it was that no one would take the female kitten, especially since she was prettier than one of her brothers, when an old baba appeared with five bags ready to feed our courtyard cats.

Here I had gone and plunked down two greevnya at the продукти for a little packet of Whiskas wet food and she was bringing them their daily ration of whatever it is that she feeds them (it was white and powdery). She took the Mama cat away from me (calling her some name) and I asked in my bad Russian, "where are other kittens? Were 3, now 1?". "They were killed" she said sadly, blaming a dog in the night. "Kharoshey kotyonoky" she said to which I agreed, and she told me where she had found their little kitty bodies. She questioned why a dog would want to do such a thing and I was so upset thinking about those adorable little kittens and how they played all day in the tall grass with each other or lazily slept in the afternoon sun all curled up together while passersby took pictures with their mobile phones.

I had to obviously reject my prior thesis that sexism had been the culprit to this selection and come to terms with again that life is just hard for those unable to defend themselves.

And that dogs just really, really suck.