Last year I took a couple of non-fiction writing classes from Janisse Ray, which I highly recommend doing. One of the assignments was to write a five-part essay.
I wrote about rescuing kittens, which is, if you don’t know, a thing we do. This is the first section.
I also want to say that I was only able to take those classes because of the membership team that supports my work. They pay a bit each month as a form of patronage, which enables me to not have to put ads all over my website or set up affiliate deals or pump out sponsored posts. In exchange, they get first dibs on lots of things, like member-only sales, writing that was just for them (on average, two essays a month) and more. They first saw this essay shortly after it was written last year.
If you like my stuff and want to see more of it, the best and most impactful way to support my work is to become a member. You can learn more here. Thanks! – HH
It had been a lovely tree, with a multi-trunked base that spread its limbs wide. In the fall, its brilliant red leaves were perfectly framed in our bedroom window. But alas, it was a Bradford Pear, an invasive tree that is spreading throughout our southern woodlands and destroying native habitat. Worse in the near term for me was that it is fragile, dropping huge limbs at every storm, and it had had to come down.
I had chopped it at 6 feet and then girdled the stump, so the trunk could slowly decay and thus feed the tiny critters in the yard, as well as the birds that delight in meals of tiny critters. The spreading trunks formed a perfect pocket at ground level, much the way your hand would if it were holding a ball by your fingertips.
But that had been a few years ago, and now the stump was covered in Virginia Creeper, which also turns red in the fall, and created nesting and hiding space for the tiny woodland creatures that live in my yard.
On this particular May morning, the sky was blue, the humidity was low, and the air was filled with birdsong as they let each other know they had made it through the night. Even though it was time for me to leave for work, I lingered on my morning walk around the yard. We get so few perfect days to be outside here, it felt irresponsible to not enjoy as much of this one as I was able.
It was then I heard it. During a lull in birdsong, I heard a rustle in the underbrush near the pear stump, and then I saw Calico peering out of the Creeper, between the trunks.
Calico is one of half a dozen stray and feral cats that we see in our neighborhood, a collection of 70 year old ranch houses on heavily wooded lots on the north side of Jackson. As people have moved away and abandoned their pets, their descendants now run wild in a local colony, relying on the kindness of strangers and their own wits to survive.
We have given them functional names, mostly descriptive in nature, so we can keep track of them. We have Calico, Tortie, Garfield, and Big Tom, as examples. They are grateful for our feeding them on our back deck, and when we are tardy with he morning meals, they peer in the sliding glass door to our living room, to make sure we are OK, and are aware they are waiting on their daily bread.
However grateful they may be, it is rare you can get within a few feet of one of them, and here Calico was, watching me, frozen, realizing she had made too much noise as I was walking past, and now she must decide how to play this. I squatted, to be at eye level, and she bolted to a clump of shrubs 20 feet away, but then focused her death stare back at me.
I peered in the pocket formed by the dead trunks and saw why – inside the nest were six tiny kittens, less than 3 days old. They were a panoply of colors seen in our local colony – two tuxedo cats, two tortoise shell, a ginger, and one perfect calico.
Immediately I knew that I had a problem.
My problem – well, my immediate problem – was not that these six adorable kittens in our backyard that, if they survived, would double the size of our colony, would wreck havoc on our songbird population, and would be pumping out kittens themselves before fall. While all of that was true, my immediate problem was my wife, Renee.
She loves animals of all sorts, strongly preferring them to people. I once asked her why, and she explained to me, in tones that would suggest I am an idiot, that no animal had ever hurt her on purpose, and that was not true of humans, and so it was clear to her where she should invest her time.
Were I were to force her to choose between me and six kittens, I am not sure the deal would turn in my direction. I am definitely not in any mood to test that scenario.
I know that when I tell her about these kittens, she will want to save them, to make sure they are cared for, that they go to good homes. I can see it all playing out in front of us – our summer vacation dashed, the constant attention, the additional cost. Our sixteen year old grey tabby Felix was in the process of slowly dying, and the vet bills were mounting. If I went inside and told her, my goose was cooked. The smart thing was to ignore them and go to work.
But for 18 years I have found it difficult to lie to her, to look her in the eye and not tell her something she would want or need to know. It is possible I could get away with it, and these kittens could grow and be weened and then I would act surprised along with her when “new” cats showed up at the sliding glass door in late summer. However, I do not want to get away with it, do not want to deprive her of the joy she will get from these kittens, and do not want to ever lie to her.
I peer at the little kittens once more, and then slowly stand, my 52 year old knees resisting the movement. I look at the house, then back at the kittens, and then with a sigh of resignation, begin walking toward the house.
