Notes

Alyssa Brown

Mrs. Absi

English 9

6 September, 2022

Pumpkin the Cat


Everyone has some sort of crazy story that not many other people have experienced, and mine just happens to be about a cat. Some things happen so out of the blue, but then really can permanently change your life. Pumpkin coming into my life was one of the best things that could’ve happened to me. In this narrative, I will be going over how we met her, her deep secret, and where she is now.

One random day late in June 2019, I was just minding my business, when I hear my mom call for me. “Alyssa, come see this cat!” she yelled, I’ve heard this before, and it always means there’s one across the street that will run away as soon as you call it. This is not what happened. Running downstairs with no real expectation, I make it out the back door to see my dad looking behind our garage. Now that I realize the cat is in my backyard, I excitedly run over to the garage trying to see it. I look behind, and I see a beautiful Tortoishell cat with big green eyes, looking scared, but not scared enough to run. With both me and my dad calling her, she made her way out from behind the garage, and went straight to sniff my finger. Once she was use to my smell, she immediately started rubbing her head against my hands and legs, wanting attention. She seems so lonely, so me, being the cat lover I am, I gave her lots of attention. Her and I both loved it so much, we ended up staying together for 5 hours. Half way through, my mom and sister had to leave, and my dad went inside. Therefor, three of these five hours I was outside all alone, but I didn’t feel alone, because I was with my new best friend. Every few minutes my dad would peek outside and tell me to come in. “Just a little bit longer?” I yelled in a begging tone, “Fine, but you can’t stay out here all night!”. After hours of her sitting on my lap, my dad told me one last time to come inside, this time I did, not because I wanted to, but because it was getting dark and cold. I came in, sad, thinking I’d never see her again, I went to bed, and when I woke up the next morning, I was sad to see her nowhere to be seen. Since it was summer, we spent most of the day outside anyway, about halfway through the day, who do we see making her way through the gates of our backyard? The cat! We run to each other and I pet her for the rest of the day. Few days go on like this, and the cat (whom we still have not named) starts staying at our house all day, and all night. She would sleep on our patio chairs, and climb our window screen when we came inside. We wanted to keep her, but my sister is extremely allergic to cat. When she started staying 24/7 without us feeding her and with no roof being provided, I knew, this cat chose us.

My dad never wanted us to feed her, he didn’t want her to get to attached because he knew that later in the year we would be moving houses. I knew that she was not someone else’s cat, because she is always with us, but I figured she might have been a house cat before because of her loving matter. She started out as a super tiny cat, but I noticed her continuing to grow, regardless of us not feeding her. My parents thought she was being fed somewhere else, but I was skeptical. Her stomach continued to grow, so I did a google research, and brought up to my family that I thought this cat was pregnant. At this point, we didn’t even know the gender of the cat, but both my parents agreed that this could be true and would make a lot of since. We eventually determined that she is pregnant, and knew we needed a name to call her. My sister and I decided on the name Alex. I never really liked it, but it worked for the time being. However, I noticed that whenever I would talk to her, I would always call her “my little pumpkin”. I liked the name, thought it suit her nice and she had very fall like colors, so I brought it up to my sister, and she also liked this name. We then started calling her Pumpkin. We knew that in a few weeks, we would have to take Pumpkin to the Humane Society, so they could properly help her birth the beautiful kittens. My grandparents at the time had a very old cat, and they had always been big cat people. They loved pumpkin, but my grandma did not agree on her not being fed. My sister and I would occasionally sneak out and give her little pieces of turkey, but that was not enough to feed a pregnant cat. My grandma went to the store and bought a container of kitten food. We started feeding her the right amount of food and my dad was ok with it. There was however a downside to feeding her. We gifted her, so she wanted to gift us back, gifting her food, and gifting us dead animals! She was a very energetic cat, so it was no surprise that she was quick enough to hunt something down. It started with little bugs like locust’s and dragonfly’s, then mice, and finally, big robin birds. This obviously upset us, but we knew it came from a good place. After about a month or so of her constantly getting herself in trouble and us having to help her out, it was time for her to give birth to her kittens.

I cried that day, the day my dad told me it was time to take Pumpkin to the Humane Society. I knew it was for the best, but what if I never see her again? That day, we took her in a cat carrier to my grandparent’s house, for they live closer to the Humane Society. Because they didn’t want to introduce Pumpkin to their cat, she stayed in their garage that night. I cried a second time leaving their house to go home. The next morning my grandparents drove Pumpkin to the society, where she later gave birth to seven beautiful and healthy kittens. The few days when she was waiting to have the kittens, I was able to go visit her for about thirty minutes. It was obvious she was very scared and felt uncomfortable in her current environment. She was not herself, which made me sad, but I knew that once she was back in a real home everything would be better. All of her kittens were sold very quickly to good homes, and pumpkin had been staying with a foster family. I figured they would end up adopting her, but what I didn’t know was that my grandparents were first on the list to adopt her if they want. One day my grandparents picked me up to hang out, and they told me they had a surprise for me. They spoil us lots, so I assumed they had gotten me a stuffed animal or baked my favorite cookies, but what I ended up getting was so much better. I walked into their condo, and saw my sweet Pumpkin! I was so exited to see her, she had adapted very well to their house, and seemed very happy. She did not get along to well with their other cat, but after a few weeks, they had to put him down anyways. It is so great that I still get to go see her whenever I want, and I still feel like she’s my cat. She loves to look outside, and you can tell she misses it, but she has it much better inside a safe and loving home.

In conclusion, Pumpkin coming into my life made me realize a few different things. I learned responsibility from waking up at six-o-clock every morning to feed her breakfast, I learned how to give up something I love because its for the best, and I became so much more aware about cats, what they like and what they don’t. She was and still is such a joy to be around and I’m so grateful to have her still in my life. After covering how we met her, her dark secret, and where she is now, I think you can now have a better understanding of her, and maybe even appreciate her more because of her difficult background.