One Kitty, Two Kitty, Please NO MORE!

Last week as we were loading up the car to take our foray into the Colorado Rockies, we were greeted by a friendly kitty on our front porch. It was playful and meowing with a tiny voice, sweet and yet stand-offish as cats are known to be.

When we were living in Arizona and had finally settled into a more country setting in Black Canyon City, we decided to get a kitten. The trouble was, when we went to pick out said kitten we took the kids with us. We encountered a desperate owner who had been found out by her landlord that she had pets when she was not supposed to. She faced eviction if she did not get rid of the animals by the week's end. (It was Thursday.) The children found a kitten that they wanted, and then the lady begged us to take the others and the mother so that they would have a good home. This amounted to four cats. We caved and took them all.

Traveling home with them in the car, our oldest, S, who was 7 at the time, began to wheeze some. Since she had asthma we weren't too concerned. The children were delighted and played with the three little kittens and their mother all night.

The next morning, S, was having trouble breathing and her eyes were swollen shut. A trip to the ER confirmed our fear -- she was allergic to cats. By the time I got back and got settled I started calling everyone we knew in the tiny community and from our former location in Phoeniz. I called every animal rescue/shelter listed in the phone book. No one could take the cats, or if they could, they would exterminate them in 24-hours if not adopted.

This was heart-wrenching. My husband took the animals to the nearest animal shelter while I was left with two grieving girls and the clean-up.

To minimize the exposure to the daughter who was allergic, we had put all four cats into our small laundry room where they could be contained and put the cat box and their food and water in there. After they were gone, I vacuumed the room top to bottom and then cleaned it all with bleach. Still it smelled of cats. So I put several candles on top of the dryer. I opened a small window and closed door to the room.

The wind must have blowed over the empty laundry baskets on top of the washer and they started to melt from the candles which in turn caused a small fire which melted a knob on the dryer.

We were around a corner in the house but S thought something wasn't right and she discovered the fire. She screamed that we should call 911... we lived just blocks from the volunteer fire department. I grabbed the fire extinguisher from under the sink in the kitchen and blasted away. It was quickly out. Whew.

Now I had so much more to clean up as the yellow dusty remains from the fire extinguisher were EVERYWHERE. Anyone whose had to clean up after using a fire extinguisher knows the tedious task well.

The kitten we encountered last week visited us on Tuesday in our back yard. We fed it some milk and cooked ground beef. When my husband got home and the girls all reported about the kitten to him, he said we cannot have kittens because it leads to fires. Funny guy.

No one in the neighborhood knows if someone around here has recently attained new kittens or had a cat that just had kittens.

Saturday, late in the afternoon, we encountered the kitten again in our back yard. We feed it again, this time milk and chicken. Then, we discovered that it wasn't one but two kittens as another emerged from the bushes, obviously smelling the food. We fed it the same as the other kitten.

I'm not that fond of cats, never have been. But these kittens took my bleeding heart away and I felt such compassion for them. Who could abandon them? And now, Saturday evening's forcast was for wet, cold weather. Indeed the cold rain with a north wind behind it started about 9 pm. Of course we couldn't bring the kittens into the house, but we were all concerned for their safety.

We set up a bed of sorts in the covered area we call the well by our laundry room door. This area is covered on three sides, has six steps down to reach the door from our back yard. It usually stores a small but odd assortment of outdoor toys such as scooters and skates so they aren't in the hot sun. In the winter those items go into a shed. We took a tobagan and put an old afghan into it and put it down in the "well" for the kittens. We enticed them into it with more food and milk. One kitten by now comes when we call, "here kitty, kitty, kitty!" The other one is a bit more skittish and skeptical and takes quite a bit of coaxing to get it in there. Of course it won't do to try to touch the second kitty but the first one enjoys being petted.

We are all relieved when both kitten are in the "well" and look as if they are hunkered down for the night.

We had a bit of a nagging concern that there are foxes in our neighborhood and other cats and who knows what else that might attack the kittens. Everyone checks on the kittens before retiring for the evening. Their are curled up into tiny balls, right next to each other and sleeping soundly. This helps all of us to sleep soundly.

Sunday morning my husband is the first to arise and the first thing he does is check on the kittens, who are both sleeping still next to each other. Each one checks on the kittens upon arising.

Late in the morning, after church, we feed the kittens again, milk and a little cooked ground beef. They have hearty appetites. All the children are now making regular treks to the back yard to play with, pick up and exerience the joy of kittens! They have named them -- Calypso and Anna Maria. Oh no. They cleverly keep this fact from their father and I for most of the day.

Hubby, though, knowing that Dream Power cannot take the kittens until Tuesday, buys kitten food and the kittens are now not feasting on our meat left-overs but on store-bought kitty chow. He suggests that Anna Maria's name be changed to Chipper as that kitten reminds him of a cat he had as a youngster whose name was Chipper.

It was cold again last evening and so we enticed the kittens into the well before going to bed. By now they are familiar with it and seems to enjoy their bed.

This morning I broke down and made a toy for the kittens involving and old paddle ball and string and taught the girls about the preditory habits of cats and how fun it can be to play with them in that way.

I fear we are in serious trouble here for another round of tears and grieving when Dream Power comes tomorrow to take the kittens to host homes until they can be adopted. Being older and having experienced so much between this time and the last time this happened I am concerned that the emotional reserve that will be required to weather this is lacking.

That that brings me to pastor's sermon yesterday which was about Ruth. He talked about how Ruth and the circumstances of her life left her running on empty. And how we, in our secularized society with all its many demands, run on empty too. He said we are slaves to our society which demands that we do everything all at once and rush, rush, rush! If we take our comfort and solice in Christ instead of all these activities and their demands, then we can know His peace and comfort even when the pressures of our life seem overwhelming.

It is that peace and comfort, in His name, that I seek as we face this situation with the kittens who have obviously stolen all of our hearts. Meanwhile, we'll keep popping the Benedryl and Tagament and enjoy them while we are able to.