One day, a lady was walking along a road and saw something moving in the gravel near the sidewalk. At first, she thought it was a bird – there was just a light fluttering movement. On closer inspection, it turned out to be a tiny kitten – just hours old.

The lady scooped the kitten up and took it to a vet, where the tiny jet-black kitten was put inside an incubator box and fed by bottle every hour. That’s how often a newborn kitten needs food – hourly, 24 hours a day for the first week.

The lady asked everyone that she knew if they could adopt the kitten, but no one could.

Finally, she decided to keep him as a foster kitten, while she found a home for him. The lady called him Kabo. When he was ten weeks old, he would go to his new home.

But for now, Kabo was a hilarious kitten. He screamed and screamed for food, even though he ate more than was needed, more often than was needed. In his second week of life, he was bottle fed every two hours. In the third week, every three hours. The foster mum was exhausted all the time, it was worse than having a newborn child, she joked!  

At six weeks, she could see Kabo’s personality emerging; he was a sweet but serious kitten and seemed to take on responsibilities beyond his little size.

If the lady left the room, he followed her to make sure she was safe. If she made the bed, he supervised. If she carried groceries into the house, he inspected them. He investigated everything and when she thought he was hopping on her chest for a cuddle, Kabo believed he was inspecting and monitoring the lady’s health.

The foster lady knew she couldn’t let him go. She decided to keep him, to grow up as a beautifully complemented brother to ginger-and-white Pip and snow-white Asha. But the name just didn’t fit anymore. Kabo was a foster kitten. Kabo became Chico, a much-loved member of the household.