Two months ago, Kylea and I adopted two kittens. We named them Ivan and Dmitri, and not long after we brought them home one of our friends asked, “Has your brain chemistry changed yet?”
I responded too quickly in the negative. How could my brain chemistry change from having two little kittens at home? The makeup of my think-y particles would never be so easily altered by the simple, yet very particular, act of bringing home two kittens. Silly me. It hadn’t hit yet. Something had changed.
To be fair, this is the same month I turned twenty-five, so it could also be some frontal lobe development. But, life is a constant confluence of changes that I’m always trying to untangle. My current thesis is, that in the grand scheme of things, the most impactful brain chemistry change is the fact that I have two little mouths to feed that will come nap with me of their own free will.
Now, I’m allergic to cats. I have vivid memories of sneezing my brains out at my childhood best friend’s house because they were a family with two indoor cats. Luckily, Siberian cats don’t produce the protein that ninety-nine percent of people are allergic to. So, I can live in peace with Ivan and Dmitri. At least on the allergy front.
They are little rascals. Ivan screams at us when he’s hungry. It’s a morning ritual for us. I’m usually running behind to some meeting I have to hop in, and he’s seated right in the middle of the kitchen meowling up a storm while I frantically scoop food into their bowls. Dmitri is much more polite about his begging, rubbing up against my legs while I prep the food.
Dmitri, though, plays as if he’s an indestructible wrecking ball. When the two of them are play-fighting (which Ivan often initiates), Dmitri (who’s bigger) will play along with his little brother’s antics before getting fed up and go for his finishing move, which is to go straight in for Ivan’s balls. That puts an end to things rather quickly.
We also have a toy that’s got some gray fur on the end of a line to simulate a mouse, Dmitri will grip it in his mouth, growl, and run away to some dark corner in triumph of his hunt. As another friend said, “Dmitri is down for murder.”
As playful and snuggly as our little furballs are, they’re also a lot of work. Litter boxes need constant emptying. Siberian fur is so thick that kittens cannot penetrate it on their own while cleaning themselves, so we have to comb them with a dematting rake frequently. Their cute paws quickly become murder mittens if we don’t clip their nails every few weeks. And, to top it all off, we’re choosing to feed them a high quality diet of ground chicken and supplements.
Kylea and I, together, spent twenty human hours prepping sixty pounds of this food, which will last us four to five months. Huge shoutout to Kylea for spending a ton of that time deboning and deskinning chicken thighs for the grinder.
Ivan and Dmitri take a lot of energy on our part to treat well. But I’m not complaining. Quite the opposite. That’s been the most impactful part of adding them to our home. I’ve noticed that I’ve become better at taking care of myself as I do my best to take care of them.
The world wide web is full of similar stories and jokes riffing on ‘providing for the fur babies’ as people’s motivation behind getting going every day. And it’s silly, it is. There’s no getting around the fact that, in the abstract, I’m a sack of meat and bones hurtling through space providing for two, smaller, furrier, sacks of meat and bones that do nothing but nap and play and eat and shit.
But, we’re not in the abstract. Look around. Everything we do is profoundly particular. Life is sacred, and it’s a genuine pleasure to have the ability to choose to do it alongside such silly creatures as kittens (and other humans).
Clint Wilson (‘23) graduated from Calvin with an official degree in philosophy and unofficial degree in outdoor rec. They currently live in Denver and are working remotely for an LSAT prep company. You’ll likely find them slowly jogging a trail, belaying their wife up some rocks, or reading beneath a heap of blankets.
