Gatinhos para adoção

My friend Wilton and I were walking back from the university cafeteria a couple weeks ago and we heard this high-pitched mewling. We both thought it was a strange species of baby bird and dismissed the sound. But farther down the trail, this tiny kitten, all black and covered in brambles and dirt comes meowing out of the bushes.

In Rio Grande we have a stray animal problem. A lot of people don't fix their pets and abandon the unwanted litters. We have a ton of street dogs. TONS. FURG must have at least 30 stray dogs that wander around campus. There are hundreds throughout the city. Often people abandon pets on FURG's campus because they know that we're a bunch of bleeding hearts.

The two kittens Wilton and I found were most likely abandoned from another part of the city. They were only 30/40 days old - definitely too young to be out on their own... I don't want pets at this point in my life. They're a lot of responsibility and I'm not very responsible right now. But I couldn't leave these tiny abandoned kitties defenseless in the wild! So Wilton and I got a cardboard box and took the kitties to class with us the rest of the day and then took them home. Our Physical Oceanography professor was surprisingly chill with the arrangement and the kittens were on their best behavior until about the last half hour when they peed in the box and I had to excuse myself to go find a new one.

We took the kittens to Wilton's house and bought food and flea and worm medicine (they were covered in fleas). I named one of the kittens Fumarola which is the Portuguese word for hydrothermal vent or black smoker - a vent on the ocean floor that emits black smoke and strange gases and metals. The other kitten we're still debating what to name him.

Unfortunately on Friday, Fumarola got very ill. We called a vet and did everything we could but he died on Sunday. :( The other kitten is happy and healthy and tearing apart Wilton's house. hehe.

a box o' kittens in oceanography class

preciousss