Pet-owner for a day

Newsflash: I'm not a pet person.

Before I receive the wrath of animal lovers, I want to clarify that I'm not exactly cold towards all animals. I appreciate zoos (I may have been to too many) and funny animal pics and heartwarming animal stories and talking Disney animals (maybe that doesn't count). Sure, I like my friends' well-behaved and clean dogs but I never really longed for a pet of my own. I blame the neighbor's giant dog that pinned me down when I was a child and gave me dog phobia for life. To this day, when I think of dogs, I have flashbacks of saliva dripping from canine teeth a couple of inches from my face.

In college, a friend gave me a small green turtle (I forget why), which I put on my side table. We stared at each other a few times and I let it scramble across my bed once or twice. I did my best to keep it alive by feeding it with pellets and making sure his (her?) enclosure was clean. For the most part, though, I think the turtle and I were just both very confused as to why we were in each other's life. When that turtle met his (her?) violent death at the hands of a killer rat (I promise you this was an accident), I felt a decent amount of shock and requisite sadness. My family replaced the turtle (I really should've told people that I don't care much for turtles) and if I remember correctly, that second one escaped its home and died a lonely death under the dusty computer table.

The one and only 'pet' I loved was a teeny tiny kitten that literally strayed into my life many years ago. I thought of him (her? I should check these things) when I saw this image on the Daily Squee. This is a spitting image of my former 'pet'.

Find the hidden kitten. Clue: it's under a bear knee. 

It all began one ordinary morning. I was in our living room with some friends when, from out of nowhere, the tiniest orange kitten casually strolled into our midst. No doors were open so it's still a mystery to me how it got inside our house – for a minute, I thought I was imagining it. After shedding a few tears at the cuteness (Am I the only one who cries at cute things?), I picked it up and found the shaking baby was barely bigger than my hand. The kitten looked a bit lost and hungry, so I tried to feed it with water and whatever milk we had in the ref. I was at it the whole day and night without much success. I don't think I did much else that day but wipe my tears and feed.

When I woke up the next day, the kitten was nowhere to be found (I'm pretty sure the killer rat didn't get to it). Like the broken-hearted idiot that I was, I cried silently in my room and prayed that the kitten found his (her? OK I'll stop) mommy.

And that's the rather boring and humorless story about my one-day pet. I think I just needed an excuse to repost the kitten-under-the-teddy-bear pic. My heartfelt apologies. 

(But really, it's a cute kitten pic, right? *silent tears*)