Cats who fly in and out of danger

The kitten is around five months old, but she’s really small and light. With her fragile bones, she feels like a little bird - and that’s how she gets her name.

To me, she’s Manohra, in Thai fairy tales, the most beautiful of the half-human, half-bird people called “Kinaree”.

Manohra the kitten (some people spell the name “Manohara”) certainly lives up to her name. She leaps from the stairs, flying through the air and, with the balance provided by her tail, which is as long as her body is, lands gracefully on her feet.

I promised long ago to adopt Manohra, even though I’ve just brought Varee, the cat who’s missing part of a back foot, into the household.

When Manohra was just a few weeks old, rescuers found her caught in a rat trap, the kind that uses glue to capture rodents. The tiny kitten wasn’t strong enough to get herself out. In her struggles, the glue eventually covered both her back legs, her entire body and one front leg.

The kitten could have died, if not from the glue itself, then from thirst and starvation, a fate facing many puppies and kittens. Babies wander, and even if their mothers know where they are, no adult animal could get them out of these traps.

The traps have to be strong, being aimed at capturing rats, after all.

If an animal has a little bit of glue (or oil) on its body, don’t try to shampoo it off. Just rub a little baby powder into the glue, and as you rub, the glue will come off painlessly.

Manohra was completely covered in glue, though. At the clinic, the vets had to shave her fur off very carefully to avoid injuring her skin. Shaving was particularly difficult on her poor back legs, which had been glued together.

In my home, Manohra, vaccinated and completely healthy, immediately settles in. Wan-Wan, my poodle pup, is especially delighted to meet a cat that’s smaller than she is, but Manohra can take care of herself. The doggie ends up at the vet’s to be treated for puncture wounds administered by fierce kitten claws.

Even more delighted is Varee. I know she’s had at least one litter of kittens, possibly more. In the filthy conditions where she lived before, her babies never survived beyond their first few weeks.

Now, in my home, she finally has a kitten she can play with.

So the step-mother steals all the toys she can find, puts them in a pile, and then calls Manohra to her so that the two can play with them together.

I still worry. Some cats and dogs are born cautious, careful around anything new. Manohra, though, eats anything she can get into her mouth (resulting in some bouts of diarrhoea). She throws herself anywhere, rushes into any corner, slams into any wall.

For her whole life, she’ll be an accident waiting to happen.