Samhain kitten

So . . . I went to Walmart to attempt to find a last minute pumpkin. And I came home with a kitten.

Walmart has a colony of cats. I know this. I've seen them before, and I've tried to catch them before, to no avail. But tonight I saw 3 new kittens. All black, except for one who had a patch of white on its chest. And *young*. Probably about 4-6 weeks.

And I figured, it's Samhain. It's just past a full moon. And there are these little black kittens. Something was telling me to try again. And it took an hour, but sure enough, I got one.

So the cat cage I got earlier in the year is once again in use, housing a tiny little kitten, all black so far as I can see. And surprisingly docile. It figured out pretty quickly that the trap wasn't going to open, so rather than running back and forth like the others cats I've trapped did, it sat down to eat the bait food. Struggled a little more when I was carrying the trap, but went from the trap to the cage without any fuss, and simply sat there, staring at me. Sniffed at my fingers when I held them to the side of the cage, and even let me scratch it's head through the bars.

I'm hoping that means that socialising this one will be easy.

My grandparents still have a tape of me at five years old shortly after my first realisation that there were stray cats out there that didn't have homes, telling them emphatically that when I grew up I was going to "rescue all the cats in the whole wide world". I like to feel I've made a humble start on that goal. I realise it's a tiny thing compared to all the far more worthy causes out there. But somehow I've known since I was five years old that this was something I was meant to do.

I couldn't have gotten a better Samhain present.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to those who celebrate today as such. My New Year's resolution at the moment has to be simply to buckle down and play catch up over the next few days -- I'm still behind in the reading as I haven't finished what was due last Thursday, let alone what will be due this Thursday. And I really *must* write a reaction paper today for Little Women and turn it in to the prof's mailbox tomorrow. Otherwise I'm going to be trying to write 2 or 3 a week over the next few weeks just to make up the numbers and I don't have time to do that. The end of semester rush is nearly upon me -- I have to decide on my major paper topic and turn in a one page abstract on it by Thursday, I have another 7-8 page paper due next Thursday, and I need to get started on the final paper/presentation work that's due in 3 weeks. Plus my work for Dr. Thesing will be picking up in the next few weeks as the submissions for the James Dickey Newsletter he has me editing will start coming in and I'm still not completely comfortable with Adobe InDesign yet. Plus I'm running out of time to do my French practice, I really need to meet with people from both my departments and work out my schedule for next semester so I don't have any nasty surprises when I try to graduate. I have to make an appointment to get the new kitten its shots, and try and spend time working with both the new kitten and Róisín and get them all nicely socialised and happy.

So, um, yeah. New Year's resolution -- Work harder. Don't go insane.