"Kore mo unmei!"

This is also destiny!

(used in the context of "that's life!")

In the Pumpkin Palace kitten saga, when I went outside this morning, only one of the kittens was sitting under my car. I gave it some more of the homemade kitty formula while wondering how many of the remaining three had turned into pancakes on the road. However, they weren't pancakes...yet.

Apparently there was a cardboard box in the nearby park where the Pumpkin Princess likes to go on the slide marked "please love these kitties". Somehow the kittens had made their way to underneath the Pumpkin Daddy's car, checked out Bistro Ayako with varying degrees of enthusiasm, and gone their separate ways. The local council (kind of a semi-official branch government for the local community of 400 or so families in this part of town) were collecting recycleable materials there this morning, and the box without kitties had become a topic of concern. Three of four kittens had been found under different cars and different porches and put back in the box, and the kitten I'd fed this morning was the fourth and final. One of the kittens was taken by a little boy and his mom, and will have a good home if his dad agrees to a new addition to the family. The plan was to put the remaining three kittens back in the box under a tree and see if anyone would take them home, and then take the remaining kittens to the health department on Monday. It would cost 1000 yen per kitten to have the Health Department take them, but that would be paid for by the local council. Before I had a chance to protest that putting the kitties in an open cardboard box where they could crawl out and potentially become pancakes on the asphalt, the Pumpkin Daddy handed over the final kitten to the local council officer.

The Pumpkin Daddy checked later and said that the entire box was gone, kittens and all. I'm hoping one of the kids playing in the park took them home and convinced mom and dad that she'd get straight 5's (A's) next semester if she got to keep the kittens. I'm hoping it's not some cruel mentally ill person taking them home to torture and decapitate. I regret not having brought the kittens in the house last night, but if I had, that kitten that found a nice home this morning, well, wouldn't have. It's really hard to say which decision would have been right. I'm trying to remember that at least one kitten will be given the love he deserves (yes, I checked while I was pooping him, it's most definitely a he).