2002: January 2008 Archives

Aphrodite  was a beautiful cat that fell into my life in November of 1998 while I was living in a wonderful little house with a huge tropical garden in the city of Phnom Penh,Cambodia.  Aphrodite was born in the attic of the house.  I could hear her and her siblings scampering around at night.  I asked my guard to go up there and get them out because the noise drove me crazy.  He tried but the mother, an orange tabby, kept going back up there to have her litters.  Aphrodite was part of the second litter that I knew of. 

Valentin wanted to get near the kittens and play with them but they were too frightened of him.  So he barked at them at pawed at them.  Unbeknownst to me, he killed 3 of the first litter.  My guard later told me about the killings after I saw that Valentin had killed a little kitten I'd adopted from a French lady I knew.  Stupid me, I thought it would be okay to leave them outside together.  I think that Valentin scared it to death. 

A few months later when the large tabby cat gave birth to a new litter, I decided to adopt one.  The mother dropped one while carrying it around back up to the attic area.  It was so small, maybe 3 weeks old, possibly younger.  I brought it into the house and held it.  Valentin saw it, licked it clean then carried it off to nurture it after it had spent some time huddled at the back of the refrigerator.  At the same time, its mother circled the house meowing loudly, "Give me back my baby."  I realized that the baby was too young to care for so I put it outside for its mother.  She took it back but was probably disgusted that it was covered in dog spit.

Then one day in November, maybe only 2 or 3 months later, while I was home for lunch, I heard Valentin barking wildly at the side of the house.  I looked outside and say a wonderful little tortoise-shell kitten frightened out of its mind, trying to make itself look really big.  I snatched her up and decided to adopt her.  Since she was so unusually beautiful and had fallen from the sky (out of her mother's mouth, I'm sure), I called her Aphrodite, after the Greek goddess of love and beauty.

I knew better than to leave her alone with the dog, so I took her to work and let her run around in my desk drawer.  Then I would supervise her time with Valentin until they became accustomed to each other.  Eventually, she warmed to him and he took over as her father, licking her clean and carrying her around like a baby. 

Aphrodite's mother hung around and they would visit each other outside regularly but Aphrodite would always come back inside.  My housekeeper would see the cats outside and say that Aphrodite was visiting with her mother. We'd laugh.  But it was true.  I always felt like her family thought that she was the lucky one who had struck it rich and landed a good deal.

This is the last photo I ever took of her before she disappeared the night of July 13th - 14th of 2002 in the foothills of Banning.