I have wanted to adopt a cat since my childhood. But in Bangladesh, unlike many other families, parental denial is the main barrier for pet adoption. Two years ago when COVID hit, I thought this is the perfect time for adopting as we are staying home, so it was now or never. When my best friend asked what I wanted for my birthday, I said kitten! Then after scrolling through many cat adoption pages, she found a stray foster kitten. In the meantime, my sister and I did long research on the internet on how to raise a cat. When she brought the kitten he was only 4 weeks old! He was meowing all the way and hovering around. As expected, my parents were furious, but after 3/4 days, they melted by his playful behaviour.
motto of his life!
But the knowledge we gathered from our previous research on cat behaviour, our kitten was totally opposite from those things. He never gets shy, loves to destroy all of my plants, always enjoys the outside view standing on the railing but never tries to jump, loves to attack the kids whoever comes to our house so on and so on. For all of these reasons, we named him "Dosshu’’ (a Bengali name which goes for pirate).
how he enjoys the view from the balcony
and this is the way he approached the neighbour cat
also the neighbor dog
When Dosshu was a kitten, he was the most notorious cat one could imagine. He was so restless, expressing his love by biting and scratching you. Whenever we eat, he starts meowing though his stomach is full, loves to pee and poop in various corners of the house (we potty trained him but still!). But when he starts growing up, these kinds of behaviour slowly get reduced.
Sometimes, I took him on a ride when he was a kitten
He loves to roam around on the outside.
Taking a position to catch a squirrel
get on the tree after chasing by the neighbor doggo 😄
On his way to becoming a good kitty
After 2 years, now we think Dosshu is a blessing for our family. There are several reasons why having a cat is blissful. Like,
- Whenever you get stressed, anxious, or depressed, just holding your cat for a couple of minutes can reduce the pain. I can literally boost up my energy through him! In the previous year, I was going through a serious mental breakdown and Dosshu helped me a lot in becoming a mentally stable person.
- Also, having a cat in the family feels like having a baby. As we are all grown up members of our family, Dosshu is the only one who can turn a cheerful environment with his playful activities.
- Before adopting him, all of us were kind of busy with our personal issues. But after Dosshu came, we learned a lot about responsibilities through raising him. We have to spend a huge amount of time caring for him. It helps us come out from a self-centred perspective.
He loves to take nap where I study, it's fun to use him as my 2nd desk!
Now from most of the cat owner’s videos, you only get the good things about why you should have a cat. But after having a cat, the owner has to go through a lot of hassles. As Dosshu is different from the regular cats, those hassles were much bigger for us. Some of them are like,
- If you live in an apartment, most of the time you need to neuter or spay your cat. Otherwise, they get crazy and spray pee all over to mark their territories. So after neutering Dosshu, it takes one week to get him on track. We have to watch him 24/7 as the post neutering period is very sensitive so you have to be careful.
- Besides, dosshu gets sick almost once a month from various diseases. Once he gets jaundice and it turns into the worst condition. It takes a long time with a lot of medication to get him cured. As we live out of the city, it’s hard to get him a good vet.
- But the thing we suffer most is travelling. One of us always has to stay at home when we have to travel. As in my country, we don’t have any cat caretakers and only one pet hostel (called “furryghor”).
Also, dosshu loves to stay in my bed and as a result, we have to deal with a lot of cat hairs in the bed sheet.
- Besides, whenever you want to play with him, you will get scratches. So in these two years, we got a lot of scratches on our hands which make us uncomfortable in public places.
- In the time when he gets bored, he chews our slippers. So all the time, we have to make sure those are out of his reach.
This is what he usually do with our slippers
and this is what we see after getting up from the bed
So after all these hassles, still I think it’s good to have a cat, because the love you get, it’s worth the pain! They will make you more sensible as a person. So always try to appreciate your pet no matter how much trouble they make.
so after all, these are the reason why he'll always be my best buddy!