…i just did something bad.
….something very, very bad indeed.
i totally jumped the gun and put down a deposit on this little guy when the plan had been to wait until January to get a cat. GAH.
anyway, now to blabber on about how that even happened. for my own future reference. tl;dr: i’m ridiculous and he’s coming home September 25th. 🙂
three weeks ago i met up with a friend at a train station near my place. it was their birthday and i was treating them to lunch, payback for them having done the same for me for my birthday. as we came out up out of the underground shopping arcade around the station, i spotted a random petshop that i’d never noticed being there before. of course, i immediately dragged my friend into it because i’m a masochist who likes to torture themself by going into Japanese petshops to see how inhumane and / or generally sad they are. anyway, i went in, straight up to the second floor where the cats are and was surprised to see the first Sphynx i’ve ever seen for sale in a petstore.
>>> segway into how i’ve always wanted to have a Sphynx because of how much they remind me of my past cats who were Devon Rex except minus the fur, among other things, and how i’ve obsessively been researching various cat breeds, breeders and adoption agencies for weeks now. i was already nearly certain that i wanted to get a Sphynx before i happened upon this one.
anyway, there he was. none of the other cats there even existed. LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT. i oggled and fawned over him as much as i could in a minute because my friend wasn’t really into the whole pet thing, so i didn’t want to bore them. we left the store and went on our way, but i knew i’d be back later to fawn over him more.
today i was on my way to one of my usual Starbucks to spend the day getting shit done (that never got done, obviously) when i decided to stop by the petshop to see if he was still there 3 weeks later. and he was, obviously. in fact, when i got there a couple were holding him, marveling at how holding him felt as they’d never seen a Sphynx before. just as the shop staff took him from them to return him to his cage, i asked if i could hold him before she put him back. he was the sweetest thing, immediately crawling up my chest into my far-too-long hair, licking my neck and giving me kisses. but as i held him, i could feel, to my dismay, just how unkept he was….
and that was the final straw. this shop didn’t even know how to properly care for him. this poor baby fffffffffffff….. ;(((
you see, Sphynx aren’t like other cats; they require a lot of extra grooming and care that this shop wasn’t giving him. because of their lack of fur, which is what usually absorbs the oils a cat’s skin produces, their skin gets really oily and dirty very quickly, as do their ears and between their toes. they need to be washed and groomed weekly, but this poor baby was literally almost a light brown color because of so much dirt caked up all over him. between his toes was so much black shit it broke my heart… ;( as i stood there watching him, you could tell he was rather miserable because of how dirty he felt. he kept trying and trying and trying to clean himself until he’d stop and take a break from exhaustion and then start back up again. i called the staff over again, asked if they gave him baths and she was like “no, he doesn’t need them, plus he’d catch a cold! he cleans himself, although we do wipe him down with a warm towel.”
….except no, he does need baths. how could you not see that? DO YOU KNOW NOTHING– of course you don’t, you’re a part-timer at a Japanese petshop that actually specializes in dogs– GAH. i wanted to grab the poor kitten and rush him home to give him a bath right then and there. ;(
anyway, that’s not all there was to my decision to buy him, but that’s part of it. as an animal lover who has spent years volunteering at an animal shelter, in general i’m rather dead set against buying pets from petstores when adoption is an option– especially in Japan where petstores are horrible, horrible places who prop up puppy mills and similar industries far more so than even US petstores do today, but… i’m not going to think lesser of the cat itself just because he happened to be born and sold into a situation beyond his control. i asked a lot of questions, found out the history of where he came from and found that he came from an actual, legit breeder. i looked up the breeder online and the breeder is actually a reputable one that specializes only in Sphynx and had nothing but years of glowing reviews. i questioned why such a breeder would sell her kittens to a shitty petshop in the first place, but whatever.
i held the cat a few more times to get a feel for him and that was that. a deposit was made and they’ll be holding him for the next two weeks until payday, September 25th, when i’ll pay the remainder and bring him home. between now and then i have a lot of apartment prep and financial number crunching to do. also gotta choose a name…!
the clock is ticking.