Here at SUNY Cortland after living on campus for your freshman and sophomore years you are given the option to keep living in the dorms or get an apartment / house off-campus with your friends. If you decide to move off campus you have the unique opportunity to no longer live under the rules the dorms have, which include the newfound freedom to adopt a pet that isn’t a fish!
My junior year I decided I would be living off campus with my closest friends and not even a month into living in my new apartment I made one of the best decisions any college student could make; I adopted a kitten who would later be named ‘Huey’.
On September 15th, 2023, while visiting my boyfriend in Elbridge, NY, we stumbled upon a hoarder’s house that also seemed to be hoarding kittens, with a full litter of 9 tiny kittens and their mother living amongst the mess. After being there for not even 5 minutes I noticed I had a small shadow following me while staying hidden under the hoard piles, a very small brown and black striped kitten jumped out and climbed from my ankle up to my shoulder. At the time I did not realize that this little kitten would change my life so drastically but after looking into his big, beautiful eyes I knew that he had found his forever home, and it was with me.
Adopting a kitten is sometimes a trying process with having to fully train them on your own, and constantly wanting to give them the best life possible on a college budget, but there is no better experience than having your own built in best friend who is guaranteed to be obsessed with you. Kittens imprint on their owners in similar ways they do with their mothers and will love you as such. Besides training your kitten to use a litter box, they are extremely low maintenance with their biggest demand being your time and love.
For kitten potty training I recommend getting litter and disposable oven trays from The Dollar Tree and setting a few up around your room / spaces where your kitten will frequent. This way if you catch your kitten about to use the bathroom somewhere besides their boxes you can quickly pick them up and place them in the nearest litter filled oven tray. When I did this with my kitten, Huey he learned how to properly use a litter box within a week making the training process go by so much more smoothly and quickly while also increasing our bond.
Training Huey taught me so much patience I did not have before adopting him, while also teaching me to appreciate each moment. Kittens grow very fast, too fast for my personal liking because watching Huey grow into the 1-year-old he is today has been the most bittersweet feeling I’ve ever felt. The first three months he was the size of my hand, by month six I needed two hands to hold him and now he is almost a full adult cat. He has made me appreciate the time I have here at college, seeing how he grows as I get closer to graduation is a constant reminder that my college experience is nearing the end, but also a reminder that once I do leave, I won’t be doing so alone. I will always have my shadow following me through every stage of life I enter from here on out and I couldn’t be more appreciative of that random day back in September 2023 that forever changed my life as well as my perspective on the world.
Huey is the absolute light of my life, teaching me patience, responsibility and above all unconditional love. I had never experienced such a genuine kind of love until Huey, who always has to be around me and yells at me (loudly meows) when I’m not in bed by a certain time, since he sleeps and cuddles with me every night. He sits next to me while I do almost anything from homework to makeup just staring at me in admiration and I find myself leaving events and hang outs just to make it home to him faster. After only having him a year he has easily become my best friend and I know adopting Huey was not only the best decision I’ve ever made, but he has also made me a better person.