Mother's Day

Hello World, Happy August! Normally this is where I would be warning everyone about the infamous Dog Days of August, but they just had a story in the newspaper that the previous month was one of the coolest on record for July (and anybody who had been sleeping in a tent would surely agree) so there's no telling what we may be in for at this rate. In fact, I just heard from a colleague that they recently had to dodge a tornado in Massachusetts, so that tells you something right there. I'm pretty sure it was New England's favorite son, Paul Revere, who famously observed: "The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind," and it appears that he was not far off the mark, or Bob's your uncle, as they say. Meanwhile on the local scene, it was during the recent Winter of our Discontent that we first noticed a couple of solid gray cats loitering around our premises and looking for handouts, and I took to calling them Frick & Frack when I would spot them through the windows, because they often showed up together, and there was no way to tell them apart. After a while, they were joined by a very large solid black cat, who was more standoffish than they were, and in that mysterious way that stray cats come and go, pretty soon two of them went on their merry way, and we were left with a single gray cat, who turned into a regular visitor at meal times. We started calling it Scooter, because whenever we would open the door, it would scoot away from us and stand watching from a distance. It went on like this all winter, and suddenly one day in early May, here was Scooter on our front porch with one tiny solid black kitten. (!) It was the very next day when I saw Scooter by the front door, while climbing out from under the front porch, was a tiny solid black kitten, followed by a second tiny solid black kitten. (!!) Admittedly, this was too adorable for words, and I took copious amounts of blurry pictures through the windows, as if kittens had never been born before in the entire history of the world. We cooed over the two kittens like doting grandparents, and found their antics an endless source of hilarity. It was a whole week later that I saw Scooter in her usual spot on the front steps, but this time, climbing out from under our porch were, yes, THREE IDENTICAL SOLID BLACK KITTENS. (!!!) Frankly, it was starting to look like a clown car out the front door, and we were beginning to wonder just how many more of these tiny black surprises she might have in store for us, the longer we waited. This was already more of a three-ring circus than we had bargained for, and that wasn't just the calliope talking, believe me. We knew we had to get the whole family off the streets before they started having even more kittens, and we had to act fast. Now, we're not easily stymied, and we've had a lot of experience taking in strays, so we thought our old standby Hav-a-Hart trap would do the trick for the mother - but it was obvious that the kittens would be much too small to set off a standard trap mechanism, and we were going to need a different approach to catching them. Fortunately our friends at Tomahawk make a handy drop-trap for these situations, and we figured that was our best bet, so we set it up and hoped for success. One disadvantage of a drop-trap is that you have to be there at the time, and pull the string in order for it to work, rather than the standard trap which you set with food bait and then leave it, to work its magic on its own. So we already knew that it was going to take an investment in time on our part to round up all four of them, especially if we had to do it one at a time. We did manage to trap one of the kittens the first time we tried it, and another one the second day, but after that, the two cats that were left wouldn't come near it, no matter what we did. When we brought the first two kittens to the vet, it turned out they were both boys, and we called them Shadow and BooBoo - although admittedly, we couldn't tell them apart, so it wouldn't have mattered if we just called them both "Hey You" for all the difference it would have made. A week later, we moved the trap to another location, and snagged Scooter herself, but it so spooked the last remaining kitten that we didn't see him after that, even when we put out food at the usual times. Our backup plan was to put food for him in the regular trap so that over time, he would get used to it, and eventually he would grow big enough to set off the trap mechanism, which he couldn't do when he was still so tiny. And then a funny thing happened. I was on vacation at the time, when Bill was at home gamely holding down the fort. He went out on Thursday morning to put some food in the trap, and discovered to his amazement that stuck inside was the last little kitten, who somehow managed to trap himself, when the trap wasn't even set - which you would think would be impossible, but there it was, big (or rather, little) as life in the trap, with only himself to blame. Of course, it goes without saying that the possibility of Divine Intervention cannot be ruled out. We already knew that Scooter was female, and when the last kitten (Zorro) went to the vet, he turned out to be yet another boy, so in the end we wound up with a solid gray mother and 3 solid black baby boys - which the vet said were probably born in February, although we never saw them until they came out from under the porch in May. One by one, between July 1 and July 17, we had the "mother and child reunion" in our library, until all of them were back from the vet and reunited in one place, and hopefully glad to be back together after their various travels and ordeals. Considering they live right in our house, you never hear them make a sound, but every time you go in there, everything is all knocked around. (I don't mind saying that I found the estimable "Anthology of American Poetry," a suitably weighty tome from 1941, face down in the litter box, which I thought was an egregious excess of poetic license, even for these forlorn days with no standards, heaven knows.) Another trick of theirs is unplugging the power strip we use for the lights, clock, cable box, and fan, thanks not, so you have to crawl on the floor under the table to plug it back in again, and then reset the time on everything - besides picking up all the books, newspapers, dishes, empty boxes, old videotapes, figurines, and assorted bric-a-brac tossed every which way. (As if they don't have enough toys to play with, I dare say - although it is a well-known axiom that when it comes to kittens, everything is a toy.) So far, they haven't exactly warmed up to us yet, and frankly after all that's happened to them, I can't say that I blame them one bit. On the other hand, they don't hide as much as some of the strays that we've taken in over the years, that not only never showed their faces, but also refused to eat, so we couldn't help but worry if they were even still in the room we put them in to start with. These newcomers are all happy to come out for food, and they eat like a herd of galloping Hoovers - which is to say, they vacuum everything up as soon as you put it on a plate. I'm glad to report that they're all strong and healthy, and growing bigger every day, although at this point, it must be said that I despair of them ever developing an appreciation for poetry, alas. Elle