Excerpt from Intrepid (Leaver & Leaver): A Tenuous Beginning

Excerpt from Intrepid: Fearless Immigrant from Jordan to America (Leaver & Leaver):

A Tenuous Beginning

We do not know just how Intrepid got his start. We met him as a squalling, bird-legged, rough-furred, unkempt, insatiably hungry kitten of just a few weeks, being delivered to us by the hands of Ahmed, a professor of history at New York Institute of Technology in Amman when we were living and working in Jordan. Since our landlord hardly delighted in our adopting additional cats (we already had several that we had rescued from the streets), we typically brought them upstairs to our third- floor apartment, past his first-floor door, in cages, quietly.

There was and would be nothing quiet about Intrepid, though. As Ahmed mounted one stair after another the squalls radiated in ever-increasing intensity.

Clearly, Intrepid had had a difficult start. A kitten so little (perhaps 4-5 weeks—a guess) could not have been weaned from its mother. Very likely, the mother had died—and we would have some evidence of that some weeks later.

Ahmed had heard the yowls in the grass behind his house two weeks earlier. When he explored, he found Intrepid, starving and therefore willing to be picked up and cared for.

Ahmed had no experience in raising cats, but he knew someone who did: Doktora Betty. Both of us (Doktora Betty and Mr. Carl) had left on a two-week business trip to Bahrain. Hoping for some guidance, at least, Ahmed called us there.

“We will take in the little kitten,” we assured him, “but you will have to take care of him for a few days until we get back.”

“What about food?” he asked. “I don’t know what to feed him, and I don’t know where to find cat food in Amman.”

That latter statement represented the state of the country: people simply did not adopt pets and finding food, litter, and the like could be difficult. Even when one store had it today, it might not tomorrow, and one had to go back to the search mode quite frequently.

“What about tuna?” he asked.

“Well, he is kind of little, but if he will eat it, let him have it,” we responded, knowing that no store supplies readily available in the West, such as kitten milk, were available in Jordan.

We then added, “You might call Dr. Ziad for advice.”

Dr. Ziad was not only our vet of choice but also the vet of choice of most of the people we knew and even of some we did not know, such as King Abdullah and Princess Rania, one of the few Jordanian families to want pets. Dr. Ziad had taken good care of our growing herd of cats, including some that had initially been quite sick.

So, Ahmed did. The tuna kept scrawny Intrepid alive for the next week or so. We returned home, and Ahmed brought him to us.

We knew he was coming because we could hear he mewing from the first floor to the third, where we lived. Very likely, our neighbors on the first and second floors also knew he was coming.

That is the way Intrepid always was. One always knew he was present. He had a personality that took over wherever he was.

For more posts about Intrepid, click HERE.

For more posts by and about Carl and Betty Lou Leaver, click HERE.