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| Name: |
Kalimah
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Age: |
Four years old
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| Gender: |
Female
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Kind: |
Moggie
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| Home: |
Adelaide, South Australia
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Kalimah lived over the road from us, one of three tortoiseshell and white cats who used to eat our cat's food and fight him for access to his yard. After our tabby Phantom cat passed away in October 2016, we were bereft. Grieving and desperately missing our boy who had been our companion cat for 14 years, we were glad to see a little visitor cat in our back yard. We thought of her as our grief cat, helping us transition from the loss of Phantom. Kalimah quickly made herself part of our lives, and in no time she was practically living with us. Thankfully our neighbor was willing to allow her to stay with us, after some uncomfortable conversations and texts.
She is very snuggly when she wants affection, and will interrupt study, housework, hobbies etc to climb up my torso and cling to my shoulder like a large calico stole, sometimes even trying to burrow into my neck to get close to me. She will guard the bathroom when we are in the shower, in particular keeping the bathmat under control, and will demand payment in licks of wet legs, which sometimes turn into nips if we don't submit. Once asleep, she will stay motionless for hours at a time in such a deep sleep that at times I will have to check carefully to ensure she is still breathing, and if she's on me and I HAVE to get up, waking her up sufficiently to move off can be tricky. At all other times, she will greet any touch with a small prrrp-mrrow sound. She loves shoes, and socks I have worn all day and just taken off, but her greatest joy seems to come from rolling in dirt in the yard. She will then bring in a load of dirt and grass and leaves etc on her back, and dump it on the bed, or on my chair. We love her, and we have silly little songs that we sing to her based on her name.
Kalimah mostly gets along with our other cat Java, who followed her over from the same neighbor, but at times she seems irritated that she's not an only cat, and will attack Java for no reason we can determine. Kali came to us with signs of physical neglect, and it is clear there has been some abuse too. Still, she is a sweet natured little cat, and actually, she is not so little any more. A year and more of good food, and she has caught up some growth and filled out. She is learning that there will always be food if she is hungry, and she doesn't have to eat every scrap of available food right now. We joke at times, given how she came to us, that she is always on the lookout for better conditions, but we hope to have our Kalimah companion cat for many years to come.
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