Molly Ringworm aka Hot Ta-Molly (Tamale)
Molly is one of Kitten’s four kittens (see “Meet the Cat Horde: Kitten” for details). Originally, we were going to find homes of Kitten and 3 of her babies, keeping only the black and white girl Minx. However, thanks to Molly, we ended up doing the reverse–keeping Kitten and all of kittens except one (a tabby boy that was the first to be adopted).
Molly ended up getting ringworm which spread to all of her siblings and her mama. I took everybody to the vet for treatment, but the kittens were so young and small that we had to be very careful with the dosage of their ringworm medicine. I had to take them back every couple weeks to be reweighed (since they were fast growing babies!) and to get the medicine dosage adjusted.
Fortunately, neither Bad Kitty nor the rest of my human family got ringworm during this time, which was probably a miracle considering we had to treat the kittens for at least 4 months before the ringworm was finally cleared. Initially, Kitten and a boy kitten (who became Skunk) were going to be adopted by a lady in North Carolina, but since she was a nurse, we kept the kittens until they had been treated and were cleared. By that time, some tragic things happened and the lady could no longer take Kitten and Skunk, so we ended up keeping them, too, along with Minx and Molly. We couldn’t help it–we’d all become attached!
Molly has middle-child vibes. We have a joke in our family about looks, personality, and smarts and how you can only have–at best–two of the three. Minx has looks and smarts. Skunk has looks and personality. As for Molly, well…she scores middling in all categories, but she’s my favorite of the three kittens, I think. Perhaps, I just love the underdog. Molly is also the most skittish of all the kittens. For the first few years of her life, she used to go adventuring and disappear for a few days at a time before turning up again and eating all the food. As she got older, she discover the joys of being petted, and now she stays pretty close to the house. If I walk outside, she’ll be there begging for pets within 2 minutes. She still eats ALL the food.
Molly’s favorite thing is to have her nose rubbed and to catch small snakes and leave them half-dead on my back steps just so I can have a small heart attack on those occasions. She’s a nervous cat who wigs out at noises (in general), strangers (which is every human on Earth other than us and maybe our neighbor Mary), thunder (understandable), rain (fair–most cats don’t like rain), some passing cars (not all), the TV (flashing lights, sudden movement and noises), small children (again, understandable–I, too, am wary of small children), cats other than her immediate family (sometimes including her immediate family; she and Skunk occasionally have tiffs), and the vets (a reasonable fear if you’re a cat).
