When most people go to Olive Garden, they enjoy a nice meal. What do I get? A kitten.
Over Labor Day weekend, the family went to the movies. Because, the movie ended at 6 p.m., I suggested we stop for dinner on the way home. Olive Garden, one of the kids favorite, won, and we headed to the one by my husband’s office.
Walking from the back parking lot, we spotted a little black kitten playing beside the building. All through dinner my daughter who was doing her job of being a sulky teenager wouldn’t talk about anything else but the kitten. She worried about it being so close to the parking lot.
When we left, it was still there. Lexie spent a few minutes trying to befriend it, but the kitten was not letting anyone close. The few minutes spread to about twenty before I suggested we take the guys home and come back. We came back with a little bowl of wet cat food and sat outside the building. The kitten, who we started calling Shadow, would come out but dart back under a part of the back of the restaurant whenever anyone came by or a car passed. Once he ran into the parking lot and scared Lexie. But he made it back to the sidewalk okay.
My husband and I thought the kitten might be gone the next day and that would be the end of it. I stopped by in the morning and didn’t see him. Lexie insisted we go back later in the day, and he was there. But we were on our way to a shopping trip with her best friend and her mom so we didn’t get to spend time with Shadow.
That evening we were back. We bought along a box, hoping to at least get the kitten used to seeing it. Again, he would come out but not get close enough for us to even pet though he looked like he wanted to come to us. We could tell that someone else was feeding him as there was a can of cat food there. An employee told us that the kitten had been there for awhile. The employee had wanted to rescue him but lived in an apartment that didn’t allow pets.
Of course, when we started this rescue effort, the goal was to get the kitten off the street. Lexie said she didn’t care if we gave it up to another family as long as he was safe. Somewhere between Sunday and Monday, it just seemed decided that if we could catch him, we would keep him. We already have three cats (between the ages of 13 and 16) and two dogs and a hamster. We didn’t really need another cat.
Monday came along and since there was no school, I knew we would be back at the Olive Garden though I warned Lexie that I couldn’t spend all day there. We decided to go earlier in the day before the restaurant opened for lunch thinking there would be less traffic and people. Nope. Employees arrived to start to set up for the day and there was a man power washing the sidewalks. We did talk to several of the employees and the power washer about catching the kitten who also was being fed chicken from the restaurant by some of the employees. But with all the activity, we weren’t going to catch him that morning.
Later in the day, it rained. That continued into the evening. I thought we would have no chance of catching Shadow in the wet. But when there was a break in the rain, Lexie wanted to go and we agreed as long as it didn’t start raining again. We took the box with the idea of setting it up as a trap with food as the bait. It almost worked, but Shadow was too fast. We talked about ways to improve the trap idea and had just put the box in the car as we tried to convince Lexie that we would come back to try tomorrow evening when all of a sudden the kitten let Lexie pet it. She was thrilled, and the kitten loved the attention.
A handful of employees came out at the end of their shift and were amazed that Lexie was petting him. They asked if we were going to take him and give him a proper home, and we said yes. They thought it was a great idea. Since the kitten was now coming close enough that Lexie might be able to pick it up, we brought back out the box. If she could get him close enough, she would put him in the box, holding him while I put the lid on it. Amazingly this plan worked quite well. All of a sudden we were going home with our fourth cat.
We put him in the bathroom with the box, water, food and a litter box. He wanted nothing to do with any of us, but at least he knew to use the litter box. I called the next morning to make him an appointment with the vet who had an opening on Wednesday afternoon. I wondered how I would be able to get him there when he was hiding behind the toilet any time we entered the room. And then Tuesday afternoon, Shadow remembered that he liked Lexie petting him. And then he let me pet him. He was less thrilled to see my husband or Jase but he definitely had warmed up to Lexie and I.
By Wednesday morning he was looking forward to us coming to see him and climbing into our laps. I had no problem getting him into the cat carrier to take to the vet who determined Shadow is about 3 1/2 months old. He is in perfect health. He received his first shots, and we agreed he would be neutered in 2 to 4 weeks.
As of today, he has been in the house for two weeks, he has settled in quite nicely. The other cats have all met him – and don’t like him. Nikki loves to try to eat his kitten food. The rest ignore him. We let him in either the computer room or our bedroom. I don’t want him to go downstairs and meet the dogs who stay in the kitchen. They do love cats but I think Shadow will be overwhelmed by them and they might bark or chase him.
As much as Lexie was hoping this kitten would be “hers” it has been clear that I am his preferred human followed closely by Lexie. He sees me as the lap or chest he should sleep on. He sees Lexie as the one to play with him. So far, I’d say he is definitely settling in. I’m not sure he remembers much about his life living at Olive Garden though he does like “people” food and gets quite aggressive about it. Maybe that is because of his time on the streets and eating his meals from Olive Garden.
And that is where Lexie and I tell people we got our kitten from. Yeah, Shadow came from the Olive Garden. And we are glad he is here with us now.
Into Another World 