The Trash Kitten I Found Is Now 9 Months Old. Here Are Some Things I Wish I Had Known

It was early April of 2023 when a small black and white kitten with his eyes barely opened toddled out from a twisted pile of old gutters and fencing that was destined for scrap metal pickup. Upon closer inspection, I discovered a total of four, the tuxedo kitten and his three ginger brothers, all tucked safely away by their mom.

For weeks I called rescue groups, trying to get them in somewhere, to no avail. Then one day, that little tuxedo trash kitten came out after me, looking really rough, with both eyes sealed shut with massive amounts of crusty discharge.

That was the day I became a cat owner, and the day I took this little trash kitten to the vet. It had been a very long time since I’d had a kitten in my life, and there were a lot of things I wish I had known to prepare for ahead of time.

The naming of cats…

I told my vet that I would not be naming this kitten, as he wasn’t staying, and to please not put a name on his records beside “kitten” or something similar. I insisted the kitten wasn’t mine, I was just helping him out. But the eye infection was serious and he was quite unwell, so he immediately moved into a crate in my laundry room. At this point, “Kitten” Waterworth became “Gomez the Trash Kitten” and all was lost.

Over the last nine months, I’ve learned a lot about being gifted a kitten by the “cat distribution system,” and a couple of those lessons, at least, might be useful if you find yourself face to face with your own unhinged demon child in fuzzy pajamas.

Owning a kitten isn’t cheap

When I was a small child on the farm in the 1980s, kittens were a dime a dozen and there were at least as many in every barn. They just needed some food and shelter, there wasn’t a lot of focus on pet insurance, vet care, neutering, or any of that. Well, that’s a lot different now.

A new kitten is a huge barrel of expenses, from the vaccination series to keep them safe and healthy to a spay or neuter to keep them from roaming (or burdening you with more kittens) — those first few months add up fast. Gomez cost me $1,000 across his first six months, just to get him up and running. That’s probably a bit more than most in my area, because I also had to deal with his upper respiratory and eye infection in the early days.

I’m currently shopping for pet insurance for him, because although cats are generally quite resilient, all that early illness might go the other way and create a kitten that costs a lot more than the national average of $960 to $2,486 yearly. I must get him coverage before we have to consider dealing with pre-existing conditions that could drive premiums through the roof.

Kittens will try your patience in the best and worst ways

Every morning, every single morning, the moment my feet hit the floor, there’s a thunderous stampede of one, running just in front of me, as if to outrace me to the kitchen. Once there, Gomez throws himself down onto the kitchen carpet, on his back, and shows me his incredibly fuzzy belly.

It’s so fuzzy, you guys.

I always give him a bit of a belly rub, and then he’s off racing through the house in a figure eight, from the living room through the kitchen, into my office where I am writing this very article and where his special hang-out area is, and back again to the living room. It’s a lot before I’ve had my morning tea, really.

But this boundless energy has its dark side, too. For example, the number of times I’ve found him in the bottom of my office trash can eating old receipts and tea bags is too high to count, and the ways that he’s tormented the (pet-safe) plants in both my home and office are remarkable. Every time I think the house is kitten-proof, he finds a new way to attempt to injure himself (another reason I really need to get him the best pet insurance possible).

He also loves to hide around corners and pounce on my elderly dogs, who look at him with a mixture of disdain, anxiety, and eager bemusement. I’ve already taken one of the dogs to the vet twice in the last few weeks for eye problems that I’m about 90% sure are caused by Gomez punching her in the face with his little (giant) 10-pound-kitten paws.

There’s no insurance on the dogs, so he’s in pretty desperate need of a job to pay these mounting vet bills. Anybody hiring?

Despite it all, the experience has been priceless

Gomez came to me at about six weeks of age, and having had baby dogs before, I knew to not squander the tiny window I had. After all, he would be a rebellious teenager soon, and I would need a reminder that there were better days before and they would come again. So, now my phone is stuffed full of kitten photos and my social media is just a lot of clickbait kitten posts.

Even if he’s a pain sometimes, and he costs me a fortune due to unintended consequences, having a trash kitten around has been a great experience. I recommend it wholly, and I hope you find a community that will remind you before you adopt a kitten that the days of terror won’t last forever.