His ears, when perked up, are quite cat-regular but his voice is no longer in the form of a ‘meow’ but rather a high-pitched girlish whine. He talked a lot without being chatty, as if giving orders, and coupled with the dark side of his eyes, shampoo fragranced fur, and his aloof bouts of isolation on the outside windowsill, as if a King, we nicknamed him ‘The Egyptian’.
He was very cautious at first and tried to avoid any contact with us. I wondered if it was because he still remembered that fateful morning of falling off, or being dropped off, a balcony.
After a month, Limpy was basically able to walk properly. “Stick with Limpy or change to Magic?” my husband asked. “Limpy”, we both agreed. Yet his name became an antonym for what he really is — an agile daredevil.
He enjoyed being alone, still does, even when the other cats are playing, or he’d go and hide off in some place to sleep, or contemplate his ‘cat life’ on the caged area outside the window.
Sometimes we’d find him sitting on the windowsill with his front legs dangling over the rubber mats we had laid over the window cage, looking at the direction of his old home, pondering perhaps what might have been. Was he wondering how he could be loved and then abandoned? But at other times he joined the other two kittens playing, flying around the room as we lay in bed.
We quickly gained Limpy’s trust though and he was much more relaxed after that first month, sleeping with confidence and in positions that seemed to us mere mortals as painfully impractical. Now I could pick him up with him remaining in my arms until I gently placed him down.
