Sun God Sunday

It's Apollo's time to shine!

I have some Sun God Sundays to backblip, but here's the first official one! I do have a Star Saturday to backblip for yesterday, but I'll do that later.

This is Apollo! Pretty sure I blipped him a while back, but that wasn't much of an introduction.

B found Apollo as a teeny tiny kitten at his workplace in El Paso. He called me and we talked about it, and he brought him home. He fit in my cupped hands and in the palm of one of B's hands. He was extremely malnourished. I guessed that he was only a few weeks old because of how small he was, so we fed him kitten formula for kittens without a mother. When we got him to the vet, we learned he was closer to two, two and a half months old, based on which teeth he had. The vet didn't blame me for my mistake on his age, because he was very small. She told us that we could continue giving him the formula for a while, since he needed the nutrients, but to water it down more and make sure he had wet and dry food to eat.

At first, Nova hated him. Tuxie and Cosmo adored him the moment he came into the house, and Tuxie immediately jumped into the role of mama cat. (Pretty funny for an intact male.) Tuxie was constantly tending to Apollo, Nova wa extremely jealous of the new kitten.

It took a while, but soon Nova loved Apollo and they were partners in crime. The only thing that really worried us was how hard they would play and how much bigger Nova was.

After a month and a half or so, I flew up to Missouri with Nova and Apollo to give Apollo to my Gran.

She loved him dearly, but Incubator wanted him. Since he wasn't Incubator's, she treated him badly.

So now, almost five years later, we're struggling to socialize Apollo. He was a really sweet, friendly and social kitten, but after years of isolation and physical abuse at the hands of Incubator and Step-Monster, Apollo might as well be feral.

It's a long road, and it must be traveled carefully, but sometimes you still catch glimpses of that little kitten. He's still sweet and loving. He just can't control how he reacts to things. He's trying just as hard as we are.

It's heartbreaking, because he knows he's broken. Whenever he reacts poorly (almost always a violent response, and he often doesn't show warning signs until a split second before his reaction) he's apologetic afterwards. You can tell he didn't mean to.

We deeply regret not just keeping him ourselves. It's something we both hate ourselves for. But we really thought he'd be safe and happy with my Gran.

Anyways, on to happier things! Apollo has been running around having a blast and demanding a lot of attention tonight. He's also been super snuggly.