Why I hide when colleagues bring in orphaned/injured kittens.
“You found them? Oh, look at ‘em, aren’t they cute? Aw.” I hear my colleagues croon over something small and fuzzy around the corner. I concentrate on looking absorbed in the article I’m reading and continue to pick at my salad. Maybe they’ll forget I’m in the break room if I just—
“Lauren, where are ya? There kittens out here!”
Drat! I drag myself out of my seat to have a look.
Why the reluctance to take a look at adorable fuzzy orphaned anything you ask? I’ll tell you.
First of all, every time someone brings in an orphaned or injured animal to me, it upsets me. It could be any orphaned/injured creature—human, feline, canine, porcine, ovine, bovine, psiticine (bird)—I poignantly feel for that being. It’s like someone takes one of those grapefruit spoons, you know the ones with little pointy spikes edging its bowl, and wrenches it into my guts. And when that happens I immediately want to fix things; whether that be with surgery, nursing, or giving it a home, I end up feeling responsible. Why do you think I have so many “special” pet animals?
Secondly, when I’m at work, I’m on small animal clinic duty. Everyone else is working in the large animal department. Who do you think is going to be taking care of said kittens for the foreseeable future? That means feeding them 4 times a day, cleaning up their wormy runny poos, cleaning their poopy bums, worming them, and changing the bedding in their kennel constantly. It won’t be any of them, as the kennels are upstairs in the small animal building. In all likelihood it will be me or the vet nurse on with me.
Thirdly, I feel obligated to actively seek out homes for these kittens before they loose that super fuzzy cuteness and my bosses notice they have a couple feline freeloaders in the kennels. When I check someone out at the till, I literally offer them a free kitten with their purchase.
So you can understand my hesitation. But…they are super adorable. Anybody want a kitten?