​​“Meow! Meow!” a sad voice chirped from somewhere. As we hunted for our regular evening rental bikes, the distress call became louder. My boyfriend worked from home so he was ready for his ‘excursion’. “Meow meow”, “I’ve been hearing that all day” he commented, as we located our rental bikes on what we dubbed ‘Southeast Asian street’ “Meow, meow, meow…” I hopped on my bike and turned to confirm my boyfriend was doing the same, but alas there he was stooped over advancing to the base of some stone steps.

My boyfriend continued in a stooped position as he climbed up the entrance of the residential access road in the small village we lived in, situated in a dumpy satellite town of the behemoth that is Guangzhou. He cupped the little creature in his palms and comforted it like a parent. “Oh…it’ll be ok".

He turned to me and immediately I could see what he intended to ask --- or tell me. “Hon, we can’t leave him here.” I rolled my eyes since we were already cramped in a single square room, crowded with 2 adult humans, 2 kittens, a wardrobe, a double bed, 2 desks, and a 3 cupboard-cum-dresser….”But we don't have room” I uselessly opined---but I knew the little ‘meower’ would be heading back with us. “Well we can’t leave him here can we.” It wasn’t a question but rather the verbal form of the glare he gave. Of course I succumbed, “ok then”, I mumbled as I parked my bike.

It was a little kitten with a fractured or sprained back leg. He probably fell off or was thrown off from a balcony, who knows? However, he smelled extremely fragrant as if he had just been shampooed, and, except for his leg, he was in perfect condition. Every day for a week I would look at that access road where we found him to see if there was somebody looking for something, but of course there wouldn't be. I confess, I was hoping to give him back, if, on the odd chance, somebody showed up looking anxious and concerned. I did it for a week yet no one showed up.

That’s how he got his name “Limpy”—Limpy limped. We actually had decided on ‘Hoppy’, as in the first few days he moved like a rabbit when released from the huge cardboard box in which we had quarantined him, so as to protect him from being bothered by the other two inquisitive kittens. “Let’s call him ‘Magic’ if his leg ever recovers” said my boyfriend. Yet immediately as we named him ‘Hoppy’, his movement transformed to that of a limp, as if being compared to a rabbit was beneath him. And so ‘Limpy’ it was. If we had followed through on my boyfriend’s suggestion, today we would call him ‘Magic’.

​Limpy has beautiful, short and extremely soft fur. Besides the burnt-orange, golden hued badge worn on his back that zips up from his tail and the brown butterfly hairdo emblazoned on his head, ears as wings, he is pure white minus a blemish or two. His eyes, a greenish yellow, are marked to the side by what looks like, from a distance, mascara, giving them a distinctive Egyptian quality. His ears when perked up are quite cat-regular but his voice is no longer in the form of a ‘meow’ but rather a high-pitched girlish whine. He talked a lot without being chatty, as if giving orders, and coupled with the dark side of his eyes, shampoo fragranced fur and his aloof bouts of isolation on the outside windowsill, as if a King, we nicknamed him ‘The Egyptian’. He was very cautious at first and tried to avoid any contact with us. I wondered if it was because he still remembered that fateful morning of falling off, or being dropped off, a balcony.

After a month, Limpy was basically able to walk properly. “Stick with Limpy or change to Magic?” my boyfriend asked. “Limpy”, we both agreed. Yet his name became an antonym for what he really is—an agile daredevil. He enjoyed being alone, still does, even when the other cats are playing, or he’d go and hide off in some place to sleep, or contemplate his ‘cat life’ on the caged area outside the window. Sometimes we’d find him sitting on the windowsill with his front legs dangling over the rubber mats we had laid over the window cage, looking at the direction of his old home, pondering perhaps what might have been. Was he wondering how he could be loved and then abandoned? But at other times he joined the other two kittens playing, flying around the room as we lay in bed.

​We quickly gained Limpy’s trust though and he was much more relaxed after that first month, sleeping with confidence and in positions that seemed to us mere mortals as painfully impractical. Now I could pick him up with him remaining in my arms until I gently placed him down.

​He has a nonchalant demeanor about him yet every day when I got home from a day’s absence and opened the door, it would be him that led the welcoming committee. “Aww! Aww!” Limpy crowed.​

​Unlike ‘Orange’, another of our cats, Limpy is hyper aware (Orange prefers the horizontal position—on his back). The King enjoys creating mischief when we’re not looking (though he seems to understand he will be found out) and has, as most cats do, a predisposition for naughtiness.

​When we moved to an apartment on the 20th floor, he took upon himself to wiggle through the nylon string balcony netting, jumping onto the ledge that decorates the building. Twenty floors high and there he was without a care in the world. And when we recently moved to our new apartment on the 32nd floor, Limpy squeezed through the railing onto the 10-centimeter wide ledge with a plan to walk towards our neighbor’s balcony. With urgency, my boyfriend immediately began creating a ‘cat defense system’ by putting up wires interlaced with cardboard along the bottom of the balcony perimeter. Though agile but not necessarily dexterously balanced, Limpy has the confidence of a King but one critical fact that he ignores is that we’re on the 32nd floor, and even Kings only live once.