milk crisis

The cat-feeding bottle came with just three rubber nipples, and little Tamanya’s vigorous feeding has now led her to bite through all three of them.

Normally, no problem: I would just go down the street to Sami Pet Shop and get another bottle for her. The problem is that May 1 is Labor Day in Egypt as in most of the world, and thus Sami is closed for the day. Unfortunately, this coincides with a near-Napoleonic milk campaign by the kitten; never has she been drinking so constantly and ferociously as now.

None of the other options have worked. She’s unable for some reason to use the familiar bottle with the top half of the nipple bitten off, when I expected she’d like that even better due to the increased flow. I also have a small human baby bottle that I bought her before finding the special one for kittens, and even though it doesn’t look much bigger to the naked eye, she seems to be horrified by having this unfamiliar one in her mouth, and refuses to try to drink from it. Nor does she seem able or willing to lick milk straight from a plate, despite bits of evidence suggesting that she’s gone ahead and done just that a couple of times in the past. And worst of all, there’s no way I can get back to Sami’s shop or any other open one until deep into tomorrow afternoon.

In the middle of all this, she ran directly in front of my right foot as I was walking and got kicked halfway across the room, which she seemed to think was deliberate. Boy, never have I looked so mean in her eyes as now. I’ll have to find some trick to reassure her for awhile, but I probably should have foreseen this and bought an extra bottle a couple of days ago. That poor creature.

The best-case scenario is that she’s simply rejecting the lick-from-the-plate option for sheer oral pleasure reasons and will finally cave in and utilize that option within the next few hours or so. Otherwise, I’m going to have an insanely angry and undernourished kitten on my hands by the time I get back here with a new kitten bottle a little under 24 hours from now. I’m feeling really bad about her right now.