Il gattino

Parola del giorno | Word of the day

Today’s Parola del giorno is the noun il gattino, which means kitten.

I’m sure many of you know the word for kitten, but I wanted to share a picture of a little kitten I adopted by chance recently. While staying with family, we discovered her living under my car. When we’d go to find her, she seemed to mysteriously disappear. Being so small, we weren’t sure how she could get away from us so quickly. We discovered she was living under the hood next to some of the engine components. We couldn’t get our hand inside to get her out, so she had to come out of her own accord. We bought a humane trap, put some food in it, and less than an hour after setting it up, she came out of the car to eat…and the trap was sprung. We moved her into the house, gave her a bath, and she had her first visit (la visita¹) at the veterinarian’s (dal/dalla) veterinario/a) yesterday. She’s doing well, she’s very playful, and she purrs (fare le fusa) a lot.

We thought the cat was male (maschio), but the veterinarian said it is a female (femmina).²

We named her Eggbert(ine) (it’s a long story).

1. Italian uses the noun la visita to describe visits or appointments with doctors/medical professionals. To say you are visiting someone, use andare/venire a trovare qualcuno.

2. Maschio and femmina refer to the sex of animals. Maschile and femminile means masculine and feminine, respectively, when talking about grammar. If you are talking about general qualities typical of men or women, use masculino, which means masculine, or femminile, which means feminine.