This isn’t going to be a specifically feminist post, per se, although all topics can be addressed from a feminist point-of-view. Rather, this will be a bit of a palate cleanser after the nastiness of the last multi-article topic on consensual rape. As well, this will serve as an update and sort of ‘part 2’ to the previous post in the Alphabet Series – O is for Ownership – Pelmeni on a Stick. And finally, from a purely selfish perspective, I’m aiming for a medicinal spoonful of self-indulgent cat-love. So to save some of you precious time if you don’t like or aren’t interested in cats or you’re not interested in a personal narrative devoid of analysis, you can stop here and keep the moments you would otherwise lose.

So in O is for Ownership, I talked about the joys of living in my very shitty apartment in Georgia. In the months following that post, things got progressively worse. I was able to confirm that something had indeed died in the space between the floors of my two-storey building when my bathroom ceiling began raining maggots and my entire bathroom was wriggling for a few days as I dealt with the mess. Then a record-breaking hot summer began and my allergies to the increasingly worse mold situation in the apartment kicked into high gear. The final straw was the indoor and outdoor construction project my neighbour began, which was extremely loud and interfered with my online classes during the day and continued on into the night when I was trying to sleep. At the beginning, before I figured out what was going on, it looked like the next-door neighbours were cleaning up the garbage dump that my upstairs neighbour had created outside my kitchen window due to throwing all his food, plastic and paper waste out his kitchen window instead of using the public waste bins. But they ended up turning the area into a private social space for themselves. The garbage dump had, at least, been quiet and allowed me privacy, but now I had balls being kicked against two sides of my apartment instead of one and even more loud people noise and double the number of loud boy children running around, for some reason. I guess they were inviting people over. Needless to say, I’d really had enough.

So I enlisted the help of my one local friend, and we quickly found another place and within a month, in September 2024, I moved myself to a slightly cheaper tiny house-type construction. It was poorly built, very unattractive, and completely uninsulated – meaning stifling in the summer and frigid in the winter, but there are actually many advantages, including windows I can open and a shower that works, that make me say ‘it is what it is, and for the price that I’m able to pay, I’m not complaining’. Highlights include: I pay 80% of what I was paying in my old place and yet, I can walk downtown in 5 minutes. That, in and of itself, is worth it and makes me wonder whether my old landlord was cheating me because I was a foreigner. Further, I’m housed in a small cluster of humble homes behind a large metal privacy gate, and I’m the farthest inhabitant from the road, so car and people traffic don’t affect me like they did in the last place, and as a bonus, the street dogs, which are ubiquitous in Georgia, can’t get in to our common area. As well, living in a free-standing building tucked at the back of the property, I don’t have to share a wall or ceiling with other neighbours. And while there is neighbour noise, which is unavoidable when you live in cities and among people who don’t share your quiet way of doing things, no one is stomping above me or hitting a shared wall repetitively with balls and other things. In addition, there are no nasty young boys living in my cluster – only one quiet 14-year-old boy who can speak English and all the rest are nice and friendly girls of different ages. Most of the neighbours are friendly to me and I’ve tried to use my limited Georgian with them to build good will. In short, I’m much better off psychologically than I was last year. I still haven’t decided what my future holds, so in the meantime, it is an adequate place for a low-incomer to live for the time being.

When I moved it, I got very sick almost immediately, and it lasted for about 4 months. I think part of it was the relief of escaping 2 years of stress, and part of it was overcoming a long period of living with serious mold. I developed a shitload of weird symptoms that left me bed-ridden with a lot of pain and fatigue, and I was very thankful that I teach online, so I didn’t have to travel to a workplace and spend precious energy leaping about a classroom. I had mentioned this briefly in a previous post, and one male brain trust stopped by to comment that I probably sick because I was a former slut who had become bitter in middle age because I couldn’t whore myself with much success anymore. Lordy, what would I do without men on the internet…? They really are so insightful and extremely generous in their willingness to share their opinions.

So let’s get to the good stuff. Cats.

There are two other cats besides my one that live in my complex. My cat – I’ll call her M – is a sterilized female, and she’ll be 3 years old in the summer. Then there is a large, intact, noisy male cat that looks like my girl, but with long fur, that sluts around the yard and surroundings looking for females to assault. He doesn’t like my cat and he won’t come near me, but he constantly prowls around my home because of the third cat. The third is a beautiful, 2-year-old, unsterilized, female Russian Blue – British Shorthair mix. She decided she owned both me and my home the day I moved in. That day, I had come back to my place after buying some groceries for my empty fridge and I found her in my kitchen, having managed a difficult entry through my small, open window at the ceiling of my bathroom. Especially surprising because, it turns out, she was also heavily pregnant at the time. I hadn’t been sure of her status as she looked bloated, but I could also feel every vertebra in her spine when I pet her. I had no experience with pregnant cats and there are so many undernourished owned, abandoned and stray animals in Georgia. But her fur was clean and soft – she smelled like laundry soap or some kind of perfume, so she wasn’t a stray, and it turned out that she lived next door. I began feeding her and within a week, her back felt normal.

I decided to slowly introduce her to my cat, who hadn’t had exposure to other animals since she was a baby. I also was thinking about letting my cat go outside to get used to normal life and become a little less sheltered and timid. It hadn’t been possible at the old apartment – the whole reason I rescued her was because I caught one of the nasty little boys chasing her and then grabbing her and shaking the hell out of her. But the new place didn’t have little boys, traffic, or dogs. After a couple of months, I allowed both cats in the same room together. Even now, months later, my cat still hisses and growls, but there has never been a fight, and she manages to settle down in the same space. They have touched noses in greeting many times, which is what familiar cats do to each other. B feels completely comfortable and unthreatened, and my cat will probably always be a bit of a princess as she is not used to sharing her human servant or space with anyone else.

Round about mid-November, I was returning to my home from the market, when I noticed a tiny face looking out at me from under my house. I stopped. then another little face popped into view. And then a third. So, it turns out there is no such thing as mothering instinct. I’ve always doubted the in-built ability of females to care-take. There are certainly millions and millions of examples within the human female population. But there are also tons of examples in the animal world that runs on instinct, where being female doesn’t guarantee a good mother. And little B has no interest in parenting. After speaking with the neighbours, they confirmed my suspicions. B spent little time taking care of her kittens, frequently taking them out of the safety of the nest and putting them outside in the cold, and often preferring to come over to my place. One of the kittens had died, and when I met the remaining three, the small orange one wasn’t looking very good and was developmentally quite far behind his grey sisters. Then the family gave the two grey kittens to another home, and I decided to bring the orange into my home so that B would take care of him. I let them sleep with me and my cat, taught the kitten to use the litter box, and I fed and gave attention to him. And his mother was spending most of her time with him, letting him feed and cuddle, both purring contentedly on my bed. After a few weeks, the kitten had grown a lot, was climbing and playing, and he was prancing about instead of hobbling around on weak legs. By the time I had to leave the country on a visa-renewal run, I was confident that the kitten could fend for himself. And a day after I got back to Georgia, the owners were comfortable enough to place him in a new home.

Fast-forward a few months. Winter was bloody cold and wet this year. It snowed three times, and the third time, we got well over half a meter of snow (about 2 feet to Americans), which stayed for a few weeks. B spent a lot of time during the winter at my place. She is free to come and go during the day, but she enjoys lounging on my bed with me, or sitting on the chair next to me if I’m at my desk. Many people think that cats aren’t social creatures, but they are. They are independent, but many of them love attention and being on and around humans. I work at home, while B’s family is out all day at work or school, and I am not sure if they spend much time with her anyway. I usually make her go home at night – the window to her home is always open for her to come and go.

In February, I started suspecting that there would be some springtime kittens. The boy cat had been very vocal and was coming around a lot, you see. And of course, not long after my suspicions arose, B started looking a little heftier around the middle. I had read that cats frequently deliver at night, so I made sure that she was never in my home at night. I really didn’t want to risk having to deal with birth complications and such. I have a very slim income right now. A few days ago, the boy cat started getting really annoying and loud and a few times during the day, I noticed him assaulting B. She made no attempt to escape and would often hear him and go out to let him assault her. It went on all night as well. The next morning, I had let my cat outside, and went back to bed to read. B waddled in and jumped into my bed with me and cuddled up in the crook of my arm. She was fidgety, and started licking her genital area repeatedly. Warning bells started going off. I looked down for a closer look, and I saw a black tail protruding and I grabbed the towel I kept on the bed for the cats to sleep on. Two hours later, there were four robust-looking kittens snug against their mother. I arranged a cosy and safe enclosure on my bed, and I kept them all for 24 hours and B didn’t leave them except to eat or use the litter box. I had left a note with my neighbours at that point, and they came to get mum and kittens, but I couldn’t help but feel that if they were to stay with me, B would do a better job of tending to her babies. In fact, later that night, she came by my place yowling and checking every window and door for a way to get in. And early the next morning, she was back. I didn’t let her in, but I’ve since let her visit, but I don’t let her stay as I fear she will completely neglect the babies.

Anyhow, cats make me happy, and I am frequently unimpressed with the way many people deal with their pets and animals, in general. I know in Western countries, people can get really bent out of shape when their pets, especially cats, get involved with neighbours or have a clear preference for other people or places. They tend to blame those neighbours instead of wondering why their pet might not want to stay with them. It’s usually something simple though: attention, food, or safety. I didn’t get a sense of that kind of fierce ownership denial and rage in this situation, luckily. It might be different in Georgia, where people seem to give less of a shit about animal welfare or see animal issues as someone else’s problem. I just hope the family gets B spayed after this litter. As much as I love kittens, it is unkind to force female cats into a lifetime of constant breeding, and there are way too many unwanted cats here as it is, many of them starving and suffering. But this is an ages old problem that crosses species, isn’t it? Myself, I tend to see the right NOT to breed as what we, as females, should be fighting for, for all species.

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Check out my video shorts of the kittens. The first one shows the orange kitten (born third) struggling to get out of its birth sac with the help of mum’s tongue, and then letting out a yell to announce itself finally.

The second short shows the four wriggling furballs shortly after birth when mum was having a quick snack.