Bittu, along with his sibling, came into my life when they were just a day old. Their mom got injured and was unable to feed her kids. These cute and fragile kittens paved their way into my heart and without any prior experience or knowledge, I became their mom. Being a strict vegetarian, I fed them with vegetarian diet, which proved to be my biggest blunder, since cats require taurine, which is present only in non-vegetarian food. We were naïve and did not have any information about bringing them up, so we never dewormed them. After nine months, Bittu lost his sister but he was not alone, we were his family and he became an inseparable part of us.

Due to my sheer ignorance in the earlier days, Bittu’s health was in danger, his eyesight and liver were affected and my vet advised me to feed him cat food or non-vegetarian food. I could not let him die just because we could not bring non-veg food home. His love broke our family tradition and we started feeding him cat food. But, the damage was already done to his health and today, he cannot see properly and is not able to digest all cat food.

Since he cannot see properly, we take extra care of him. Bittu also has his own way of expressing his needs and love. He loves to sit in the window and whenever he climbs to a new place, he shouts to inform us about his whereabouts and wants us to check on him. Bittu dislikes taking bath and medicines and hides below the cot, whenever it’s the time for the same. Having him at home is the best thing to happen in our family. – Charu Shah