I'll be Home For Christmas

T
here are people in the world who stop their love on cats and dogs (and other animals)'s artwork, and there are also some other who loves the original, living animals more than the pictures.

I love both. I love the artistic beauty of animal in a picture, and I am in awe by the grace of God with which they move in their lives.

In term of preference, I adore Makoto Muramatsu, a Japanese artist who dedicate his artworks picturing dogs and cats (and other animals too) and their abundant antics. One of them is below:

I've got this picture long ago on Christmas, and though I have lost the original e-card with which it came along (my computer crashed a lot of time, actually), the picture of a stray cat on a pole, under the window, continue to knock my heart until today.

The picture, along with Bing Crosby's classic "I'll be home for Christmas" remind me of the many, many, many stray that does not share the luck of a warm home and the gifts of families and friends in Christmas, even if only in their dream.

So, every year around Christmas, I made a resolution of opening my door to as many as I can, one year has to be better than the last, and especially this year, because the politic heat of the office had left me with no choice but to kill my heart or continue living as a human elsewhere. I choose the second: I quit my day job and decided to live off side jobs and a craft store I opened on etsy.

My last day at work is December 20th, hence, in one sense, I'll be home for Christmas.

And then, a week before my last day on office, I met this little kitten, left to die on the parking lot in the office complex:

He was as small as a palm of my hand, emaciated, sick, and was so weak that he barely hold his head when I picked him up. It was lunch hour, and I waste no time doubting whether I wait until the end of the working hour or not. I did not return to the office, but jumped the next public transport that zoomed to the nearest vet office, where he got some transfusion and antibiotics.

He died on my lap the same afternoon, after opening his eyes for the very first time after I pick him up. Just that. He opened his eyes, sent out a voiceless meow, and gone.

When I went to the office the next day, I first made a turn to the garbage post to dump the trash. Cleaning officer in my residential complex was a well known sloth. He come only to ask for money, but left trash where they were, until people in the complex hauled their trashes on his house as protest. I choose to shrug my shoulder, bring along the trash bag with me and dump it in a fill near the bus station on my way to the office.

On my way to the bus station the corner of my eye glimpsed on a bundle of rather furry mushroom at the edge of a stall.

"What funny mushroom", I think, "It has fur like..."

Cats.

So I turned around and found... five kittens. Of various colours, and age, huddled at the edge of a stall, full of mud, and smelled like the actual sh!t.

This time too, I didn't waste too much of time. I open my back pack, push them inside, and go back home. Heck with being late to office.

They don't seem to belong to the same litter, since they differ in sizes, but for small kittens like them to find each other and huddled to one another is kind of God's work.

The calico kitten on top got crushed leg. She walked by dragging her right hind legs, and since she is sitting all the time I didn't find out about the broken leg until later, when she force herself for food. The others are sneezing, emaciated and got hypothermia; though, Thank Lord, He sent another miracle: despite the foreign smell, and faces, three mother cats (and their litters) that I have picked up a few days earlier share their motherly grace.

Florence taking turn with the nursing after Tango, the orange cat on top who cleans herself. 

With the help of the Syndicate's moms, they got better, though very slightly, and not for long. They are only two to six weeks, too young and small to get strong medicine. What the vet and I can do is to keep them warm and full, a lot of vitamin to help them cope with their condition, and a lot of hope as with prayers, that they are going to make it.

They didn't.

Starting with the grey tabby, the smallest and the youngest among the five, one by one bid farewell. Noelle the little calico, went the last.

On Christmas eve, no one stays for Christmas, though maybe they don't need to, so they don't have to know more of this merciless town that dump them in such young age.

But even so, at least they are home for Christmas, and not only in their dream.