Love for Sale

...or, rather, Love for adoption.

We are reluctantly trying to find a new home for our youngest kitty, whose name means Love. Which is to say that we haven't yet tried at all, despite an offer from one of my brothers to take Love to live with him and his dog.

Love would do just fine with a doggy companion. But he needs what my brother can't give him: access to the outdoors.

Love is a beautiful, sleek, lilac-point Siamese with periwinkle eyes and a pale fawn coat. He also was slightly insane before we finally granted him access to the outdoors two years ago.

When able to go outdoors once a day, he's the perfect kitty. He's energetic and healthy, but also enough of a coward to keep himself out of harm's way. Upon returning from a day's jaunt, his needs are few. A bite of kibble. A nap. The chance to snuggle in my lap.

Sadly for Love, the vet ordered him converted to an indoor kitty, on account of the pregnant lady in the house. (We live near a woods that harbor summer ticks, and apparently the Advantage anti-tick treatment doesn't deal with tick nymphs.) Love cannot understand why his outdoor privileges were revoked, and so he spends the mornings racing around the house, wailing.

No. Not wailing. Screaming is more like it.

Love howls and rages like an angry infant. Or six. (For such a little kitty, he has powerful lungs.) He stands by the door and commands it to open. He stares up at me and says many a bad word.

Sometimes I can soothe him by holding him tight. By whispering his name and stroking his nose. Sometimes he'll fall asleep in my arms. But, twenty minutes later, he's shrieking again like one possessed.

So I try to distract him with cat toys. With an open window. With cat nip. (Bad cat mommy. But it works.) At a moment of peak frustration yesterday, I carried him to the bathroom, deposited him in the dry tub, and closed the shower curtain. This baffled him enough to produce a few minutes of silence.

Since we now live in an apartment, I worry a lot about our neighbors. After all, the walls are thin. How thin, you may ask? So thin, that when the woman next door sneezes, I have to suppress the urge to call out "Bless you!"

And I worry about Love. He's a good kitty, and, although I agonized about the decision to let him roam outdoors, there is no denying that it made him a much happier animal. He loves the stimulation of new sights and smells. And he loves to roam free in the mornings. I comprehend the enormity of what we've forced him to give up.

Our other two, more rotund, cats are very much at peace with life indoors. They sit on the windowsills and sniff the air. They do not ask to go out.

Geezer Cat sleeps through Love's rants. He's lived with them before, back when Love, then an abandoned kitten, first came to stay with him and Adam in their old apartment.

Poor G. is less certain what to do with Love's meltdowns. He surreptitiously trails Love around the apartment. He looks at me, imploring: "Make him stop!"

Early this morning, when Love sprang onto the bed with hysterical cries, G. had finally had enough. Looking as stern as a fluffy grey kitty can, G. sat up on hind legs — and bopped Love on the head.

Startled to silence, Love licked G. on the nose, as if in thanks. Then the two of them curled up and went to sleep.

Feeling groggy and grateful to G., I stroked Love’s face and thought: “How can we give you up?” And then: “How can we not?”