Remember, Remember, the 3rd of September

Cosette now has a little brother to share this blog with. And I have a new favourite day of the year.

On the 3^rd of September (though I’m hoping you were able to guess that from the title of this blog), I was walking around Fort Kochi, thinking about Cosette and wishing I could be with her on the 1 year anniversary of the day I found her.

I explored the town some, did a little shopping, etc., etc. Actually, I don’t rightly recall just what I did. But as I walked down the road along the docks, I saw a tiny kitten who was darting out into traffic as though looking for someone to pick him up. What a shock, I picked him up, and instead of fighting me as many cats would, he spun around, trying to snuggle closer to me. I was pretty much smitten with him immediately.

I knew though that I wouldn’t be able to take him back to the guesthouse where I was staying. I was in a dorm room with other people, so there would be no way to hide the fact that I had a kitten. Especially as he demonstrated that he knew the best way to get my attention was to climb up and meow in my face.  
So I took him to the Mad Dogs’ Trust, an animal shelter across town. I got many strange looks, walking through the town with a kitten who kept meowing, and trying to climb up onto my shoulder. I finally reached the point where I simply did not react to the looks. Honestly, you reach a point after some time, where you just don’t even care anymore that you’re being stared at. You see it, but you stop being bothered. And I knew that my options were to either not be stared at too much (but probably be stared at some, just for being white) and leave the kitten behind, or take care of him and be stared at a lot. Staring didn’t really bother me when those were the options. Instead, I pretended that there was no one on the street but Marius and me. Though, for some reason, my mind did register the people who got huge smiles on their faces upon seeing us…

I left him for the night at the shelter, promising to be back the next morning to see him. The thing of it is, even then, I had no plans to take him home with me. I planned to leave him at the shelter. As it turned out, however, they were just preparing to close down, and any animals they couldn’t find homes for would be turned out onto the street. And Marius, being new, would have been low on the list of animals they would make an effort to find a home for. I contacted a couple of people, but neither could take another cat. For this reason, my plans changed, and I decided that, in spite of the hassle it would be, I would take Marius with me.
And this was the beginning. During the time we spent in Fort Kochi, Marius and I grew very attached to one another. He went all over town with me. We went for walks, went to restaurants, and even watched the sunset at the beach. He occasionally became frightened by people, or dogs, or loud vehicles, but eventually realized that if he was snuggled up to me, there was no reason to be afraid.
So once again, I have ended up with a friend who I love dearly though I never foresaw that we would meet. We’ll see how all of this ends up.