The Adoption Story of "Mystique"...the lucky kitten from Old Airport Road
From the desk of Mystique's adopter...It is human nature to want what you can’t have, and to tire of what you do have. The people, creatures or objects that are out of our grasp seem irresistibly attractive, but once we finally have them, their lustre pales a little.
What child doesn’t want a pet? At the zoo or in the pet shop, domestic animals are undeniably cute: they’re cuddly, wriggly and active, these tiny little balls of fur with impossibly big eyes that look hopefully up into your face. Like every other child, our daughter Anya wanted a pet. She didn’t mind if it was a dog or a cat (or a dragon, she said). And my husband and I thought it would be a good idea for her to have a companion as well, so we set about the business of adopting a kitten.
Now that we have had Mystique for just over a month, she doesn’t seem as valuable a commodity as she had been in our imagination. Yes, she is as cute as ever and ridiculously affectionate – but she wakes us up at the most unreasonable hours of the night because she’s decided she wants to play. Sure we could shut her out of our bedroom, but she’d only sit outside and wail. Or worse still, she’d go and wail outside Anya’s door and wake her up too!
When I leave for work in the morning, Mystique clings on to my jeans with her claws and howls at the top of her voice as I try to make my way to the front door without treading on her. You can’t open the fridge door or the shoe cabinet without her trying to climb inside. Sometimes she thrusts her smelly little chew-toy into my hands, or worse, my face.
In other words, she is really quite inconvenient.
However, when my husband and I made the decision to adopt a kitten, we knew that it would be for life. Should we leave the country for good, Mystique would come with us. Should she fall ill or injure herself, we would make sure she was looked after. In other words, she has become a member of the family. She is ours – and is our responsibility. Just as we would never dream of giving Anya away, we will not be able to bring ourselves to abandon Mystique or give her up just because she can be a little troublesome.
It’s funny to see Anya interact with her. At 3½ years old, Anya is ready for a playmate. She reads her stories, tries to carry her, calls her “baby”, and strokes her at every available opportunity. She also growls at her, tries to smack her and shouts at her when Mystique does not respond the way she wants her to. More than once I’ve heard Anya say: “I’ll give you back to Fiona (Mystique’s foster parent)!” This little cat has become the sibling that we haven’t been able to give her, with all the love and all the rivalry that that kind of relationship involves.
Just by having to live with a newcomer in the house, Anya has had to learn patience and a measure of tolerance (as has Mystique!). She has had to learn that she cannot act out or hurt her just because she is upset, or just because Mystique isn’t behaving the way she wants her to: hard lessons for a toddler to learn, especially when she has always been the centre of everyone’s attention. Anya has been the princess of the family her whole life (she’s the only grand-daughter on both sides of the family), so it’s time she learned a bit about sharing and about responsibility. I truly believe that this little cat will help develop our daughter’s character in a way that nothing else can.
Inconvenient though she may be, Mystique is also the sweetest little thing. She reaches out often to touch Anya’s face with her soft paws and puts up with all her silly antics. She likes to put her little face close to mine in the morning and mew softly until I open my eyes and stroke her. When we come home in the evenings, she comes rushing out to greet us, and will select one of us to follow around the house until she finally gets picked up and made a fuss of.
So we take the good with the not so good, but most of all, we just enjoy the newest furry addition to our family.
