Introducing: Rosa!

Rosa joined the furry crew in April, 2000. Jbash and I were shopping at Carlmont Nursery in Belmont, and heard a kitten crying.... of course I investigated, and I found this dirty, hungry little kitten in a pile of junk and garbage in the alleyway behind the nursery. According to staff at the Mexican restaurant that also borders on the alleyway, she had been there for a couple of days. Figuring that she was lost or abandoned (or if she was someone's pet, they didn't deserve to have her!!!), I took her home, cleaned her up, and had her checked out by my vet.... after which I found myself with a friendly, spirited, and beautiful 5.5 week old kitten on my hands.

I named her Rosa, for two reasons. First of all, I found her near a nursery, so I wanted to give her a plant-related name.... Rosa is the genus name for roses, which (as seen elsewhere on this site) I grow a lot of. Second, the name Rosa is also evocative of the Mexican restaurant on whose leftovers she was living before I caught her.

I learned more of Rosa's story several months later, when I happened to meet (via a local cat-related mailing list) a woman who takes care of the feral colony at Carlmont Shopping Center. She told me that the unspayed females of this colony (there are, unfortunately, a couple of girls who are extremely trap-shy) tend to have their litters on the roof of the shopping center, almost directly over the alleyway where I found Rosa. So presumably Rosa was from one of these ferals' litters, and somehow got separated from her family.... that explains why the staff at the Mexican restaurant had only seen her around for a couple of days before I found her. The colony caretaker told me that she had trapped and re-homed a couple of kittens from a previous feral litter that were virtually carbon copies of Rosa in markings and body shape.

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