Nur Qistina is reluctant to let her cat Bubba venture outdoors as she is afraid of him catching parvovirus from a sick stray. Overprotective? You would be, too, if you knew Bubba’s origin story.
“We found him as a stray kitten in 2014,” she tells FMT. “He got injured when he inadvertently got into our car engine, so we had to take him in and nurse him back to health.”
Sadly, little Bubba had to have one arm amputated. He gets around on three legs, and was as agile as any cat when he was younger despite being differently abled.
“He knew how to play fetch with a crumpled paper ball when he was young, but now he is too fat and lazy to play,” Nur Qistina laughs.
Bubba has a vibrant personality to match his unique physicality. “His mood shifts from one end of the spectrum to another. Some days he is clingy and affectionate; other days he is like an old man.
“He can be friendly or he can be fierce. It really depends on his mood. He’s 48 in human years, after all. No wonder he’s grumpy,” she jokes.
Grumpy he is – and discerning, too. Nur Qistina says Bubba only eats kibble and never bothers with human food, no matter how good it is.
“Sometimes I wonder if it’s the way different foods smell. Maybe he thinks our human food is not up to his high standards,” she muses.
Otherwise the domestic longhair enjoys the kitty classics – watching birds, hiding in cardboard boxes, and getting scratched and petted. Sleeping, naturally, is another of his favourite things.
“Every night he climbs up to my parents’ bed where he sleeps in his own little bed at my dad’s feet, complete with his own pillow,” Nur Qistina reveals.
Hints of his traumatic kittenhood emerge every now and then. “Sometimes he has separation anxiety, so he follows where the humans are in the house just to be near us, while minding his own business,” she adds.
Overall, though, Bubba is a happy, well-adjusted and independent cat – almost too independent, as he always insists on going into the garden to eat grass.
“Bubba is having a hard time staying indoors too,” Nur Qistina laughs, alluding to the current Movement Control Order (MCO). “He is always ‘yelling’ at us to let him go outside.
“It’s really funny how he also cannot stand our MCO enforcement on him!”
TELL US ABOUT YOUR PET: FMT Lifestyle readers are invited to send in pictures (landscape format) and a short video (if any) of their furry, scaly or feathery friends to lifestyle@freemalaysiatoday.com. Don’t forget to include details like your pet’s name, age, breed and a short story about them.
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