Ammo Grrrll contemplates the maternity of MOTHER FERAL CAT. She writes:
Last week we had a lively discussion of Fathers and Flags. I try to make sure I weigh in EVERY Father’s Day because men in general, whether fathers or not, get such a terrible rap by the loons in charge these days. I am a nobody – an “influencer” of a few hundred wonderful people – but I feel that I have to do what little I can to correct that abomination. For my late father, for my dear husband, for my sweet brother, for my good-hearted son. For my many valued male friends.
I have not talked much about Mother’s Day for a few years because, quite frankly, it is just too painful for me still, even nine years – can that BE? — after my beloved mother’s passing. In May, I cannot walk by the greeting card section in Walmart without tearing up. But this column is not about grief. So let me tell you about another mother.
Her name – Smokey – was chosen when she was a kitten and before we had ever seen any evidence of her sex. She was part of a feral family and would skedaddle when we got within 10 feet of her. Oh, I don’t mean she would back up a few feet. I mean she would do a Usain Bolt and be halfway to Casa Grande.
Her litter brother – who had been outed as a boy when he trotted by with his tail in the air – had a black mask on his white face and so was born to be named Bandit with his companion, Smokey.
There was also a third kitten, an adorable little grey fluffball who eventually became Gracie (grey, see? get it?) and who has been turned into a semi-tame, indoor-outdoor cat who mostly lives with the Paranoid Texan Next Door. He has put in something in the area of 10,000 hours of patient, loving care to take her from feral to slightly less feral.
When the kittens were just a few months old, their Mama disappeared, literally never to be seen again in the neighborhood. It broke my heart because the estrangement seemed to come mostly from the KITTENS themselves who were teenagers and perhaps needed this final break to mature. Joe said he had seen this as a kid with his mother cat and kitten, but I never had.
Anyway, the three litter mates would come to my patio every morning around 6:00 a.m., depending on sunrise. I would feed them and they would romp and play Hide ‘N Pounce and generally amuse me thoroughly for about 90 minutes. And then, as though a bell rang announcing it was time to go to a different class, they would all walk the fence line into the PT’s beautiful backyard with gardens and great hiding bushes and trees to climb. Kitty Paradise!
One thing that never failed to crack me up was that they had a couple of High Value Cat Toys – a green catnip mouse and a dessiccated REAL former lizard – that each would claim as his own and hide them from one another. I would find them in the funniest spots.
At some point we noticed that Smokey was putting on a lot of belly weight and eventually was obviously not only a she, but “in a family way” (as they made the writers had it when Lucille Ball became pregnant on I Love Lucy in gentler Hollywood times when married people slept in twin beds and unmarried people had never even heard of sex).
Smokey was between 7 and 8 months old herself, a virtual teenage mother. We had always assumed that she would use her personality for birth control. Aside from being skinny and kind of unkempt, she was not at all a “people person.” Even the most sympathetic person would have to believe she was on some sort of cat “spectrum.”
She would bare her teeth and hiss or even growl. If you tried to pet her, she would allow it for a millisecond only to draw you in and then SWAT! With her claws out. She drew blood from the long-suffering PT on numerous occasions. She was the kind of cat that, if she could, would have smoked cigarettes. And I don’t mean Virginia Slims. I’m thinking here of unfiltered Lucky Strikes or Camels. If she weren’t coal black, she would probably have gotten a tattoo.
So here she is big as a house and as many preparations as we tried to make for a birthing center for her, she was having none of it. Once, she came into the PT’s open back door and sat in his kitchen, looking about and measuring for drapes. But the second he closed the door and she was trapped, she took her insanity up to eleven. She hurled herself against his kitchen windows and was eyeing the cutlery when he opened the door and herded her out. Then changed his underwear.
Gestation in cats is between 60-63 days. Since we had no idea WHEN she had gotten herself in that condition with her short skirts and all, we could only make an estimate. We hoped with all our hearts that we could help her. The PT even bought little bottles and kitty formula and made a terrific three-bedroom cat condo in a low cupboard in his spotless garage.
One day she disappeared and two days later returned, skinny as a rail. She seemed to be in great distress and we all assumed that she had lost her kittens, as that is not uncommon in first litters with very young mothers.
The weeks roll by and she is much more mellow, allowing herself to be petted for the first time and eating like a horse and yet not gaining any weight! The Arizona heat kicked in and she would lie in the shade on my patio looking absolutely spent. Periodically, she would disappear. The PT tried to follow her a few times but that was a fool’s errand. She saw him and was not only much more fleet of foot than a Geezer American, even a very fit one, but wily as the proverbial coyote.
Then on Tuesday, June 3, which happened to be Joe’s and my 58th wedding anniversary, the PT texted me this short message: “Guess who has three new kittens?” “Who? What are you talking about?” “YOU!”
Smokey had moved the kittens – all fat and well fed and cared for – from wherever she had had them stashed — to a big bush in the PT’s yard where very likely SHE had been hidden as a kitten. There are two orange ones and a coal black one, matching the two dominant “Toms” in the neighborhood! The kittens were right about six weeks old at discovery, eight at this writing.
Not only are they adorable but this least-likely cat Mama is a nurturing, loving mother, constantly cleaning and feeding them and showing them the ropes of life as a quasi-feral cat. “Over in that pile of leaves is the potty. Over there is the garden where if you go in it, nobody will find you ever. Over there is my crabby sister Gracie, who is jealous as heck because I have you and she does not! Neener, neener.” And so on.
Which raises the question: Is mothering mostly instinct? I certainly felt so when I had that newborn put into my arms and I knew to the marrow of my bones that I would kill anything that tried to harm him with my nails and teeth and, if possible, a weapon. I actually wrote that in a diary I kept then.
But sad human experience of women abandoned, women too young, women addicted to drugs or alcohol, women willing to pimp out their little ones for another fix – has made me wonder if we humans have lost that instinct? Is it a natural consequence of being legally able to kill them in the womb over the last half century? Or are we just not as morally advanced as a neurotic feral cat?
I am a yuge fan of babies, especially fat babies with creases in their forearms and legs, but I have never tried to eat one like Joe Biden. Yet several of my best women friends have never had children, the majority as far as I know by choice. They have lived happy and productive lives. They have definitely missed something, but so have we all who charted a different path from someone else. No wonder reincarnation is an attractive concept. Next life I would be thin and blonde and have eight or ten babies in Israel. (But fear not, dear readers, I would still email my column to Scott on Wednesdays!)
