Although I kept watching, I didn’t see her again that day. The next morning when I went out to fill the bird feeders, there she was, waiting for breakfast. While she ate, I alerted Carl, and he brought the cat carrier outside. As soon as Mama finished eating, I approached her. She let me pet her again and when I picked her up, she didn’t struggle.
We put her in the carrier, zipped it shut, and drove to the veterinary clinic.
Our vet examined Mama and then said he needed to X-ray the shoulder where the lumps were. While we waited, we discussed where we would put Mama and the kittens after we caught them, and decided that, once again, Carl’s workshop was the best choice.
When Dr. Gran brought us the results of the X-rays, he look grim, and I braced myself for bad news. I expected him to say Mama had multiple tumors, possibly cancer. Instead he said, “This cat was shot with a pellet gun.”
I gasped.
“Those lumps,” he continued, “are pellets that are still inside her.”
“Can you take them out?” I asked. “Should she have surgery while she’s nursing kittens?”
To my surprise, he recommended leaving the pellets where they were. “Her body has healed nicely around them and they don’t seem to be causing her any pain. Let’s not put her through surgery unless it becomes necessary.”
I looked at this lovely, trusting cat who was struggling to raise her babies in the woods. How could anyone shoot her?
I asked if the pellets might cause her to move slowly.
“More likely, she’s exhausted. Until she found you, she probably hasn’t had a dependable source of food, and it takes a lot of energy to nurse kittens and keep them clean.”
When we got Mama back home, I longed to put her in Carl’s workshop instead of turning her loose. I wanted her to have a soft, warm bed and to be safe. But I knew her kittens still needed her, so we opened the carrier in the backyard and watched as Mama slipped off into the forest again.
The next morning when I walked back to the house after getting the morning paper, I saw something by the front door. I wondered if FedEx or UPS had left a package the day before when we were gone. As I got closer to the house, I realized that the “package” was a fuzzy ball of orange, brown, black, and white fur. Mama’s three kittens were curled together on my doormat, sound asleep. I felt as if Mama was telling me that she knew her babies were safe with us and that it was okay for us to help her care for them.
First we needed to corral the kittens and get them all into Carl’s workshop. Mama now let me pet her any time I tried, and I knew it would be simple to pick her up again. The kittens were another matter. They scattered and hid whenever they saw me coming.
We put some kitty-num-num in a bowl on the porch for Mama and also put some in a shallow saucer near her, hoping the kittens were ready to try solid food. They were. They watched Mama eat; then they sniffed the saucer of food, took a few tentative licks, and soon devoured every crumb.
A few hours later, we put more food out, but this time instead of setting it on the porch, we put it partway down the brick path that leads from the front door of the house to the driveway and to the workshop’s entrance. Each time we fed them, we put the food closer to that door, and by the next day the kittens were eating on the driveway directly outside the workshop.
The final step was to put the food inside. Before we did that, Carl tied a string to the doorknob and left the workshop door open. He laid the string across the driveway, and he sat on the far side, ready to pull on the string and jerk the door shut as soon as all four cats were inside at the same time.
This is Mama.
I never got decent photos of the three kittens.
Mama went inside and ate. One of the kittens went with her while the other two watched from the driveway. Then those two started to go in, but the first kitten ran back outside. It was like a kitten relay race and it went on for hours. They all ate, but never at the same time. One would go into the workshop; another would go tearing out. There were long stretches of time in between feedings, when none of them were inside, but Carl didn’t dare leave his post for fear that he’d miss his chance.
Carl was still sitting in the driveway holding the string when the meter reader from the electric company drove in. He stopped on the far side of the string and got out, looking perplexed.
“Am I not supposed to drive across that string?” he asked.
Carl explained that the string was tied to the doorknob because he was trying to catch some feral kittens. The meter reader nodded, and gave him a look that said, “I’ve run into some crazy customers in my time, but this one takes the cake.” Then he drove his truck across the string, got out and read the meter, and left, shaking his head.
Finally, all three kittens crowded around the food bowl at the same time. Carl yanked on the string, the door slammed shut, and the kittens were all in his workshop. Soon I caught Mama and carried her inside, too, but when I put her down in the workshop, I didn’t see any kittens.
“I never knew there were so many hiding places in this room,” Carl said.
“Where are the kittens?”
“One is under the workbench, one’s inside that player piano, and I don’t know where the third one is.”
They came out when they realized Mama was there, but they kept their distance from us. It took a full week of dragging strings around for the kittens to chase, and letting them play with my shoelaces, and talking to them while they ate, before they let me touch them. I didn’t get much writing done. Usually when I’m kept from writing, I get cranky, but my time in the workshop that week was a delight. There is nothing cuter or sillier than kittens.
The first time I petted one of the kittens, I got a shock. “This one’s been shot, too!” I said. “I can feel the pellets in him, the same as in Mama.” It made me sick to my stomach to think of someone aiming a gun and firing at these innocent little creatures. I wondered if there might have been more than three kittens in the litter. Maybe these survivors were the lucky ones.
By the end of the second week, the two calico kittens had made real progress. I still couldn’t pick them up, but they let me pet them while they were eating, and they no longer ran and hid whenever one of us entered the room. The third kitten, the tuxedo, remained skittery, but I felt that, in time, he’d become tame, too.
The trouble was, our time was limited because we were scheduled to leave for Chicago in the motor home. We were attending a convention, and then I was visiting schools and giving library talks all across the Midwest. We would be gone for six weeks. Pete, Molly, and Daisy were going with us, but there was no way we could take Mama and her kittens, too. They had not yet even seen our own pets. Besides, there’s a limit to how many animals I wanted to take across the United States with me.
We didn’t want to leave them in the workshop even if we could find someone to come in to feed them. They needed lots more socializing, and they needed it now. When we returned in six weeks, it would be too late.
I called my friend Susan, who had founded Pasado’s Safe Haven, an animal rescue group that operated a sanctuary, including a large area for cats called Kitty City. After I explained the situation, Susan offered to take all four cats. “Our volunteers will work with the kittens to finish socializing them,” she said, “and then we’ll try to find good homes for them. For Mama, too.” I assured her that Mama was already friendly and should be adoptable as soon as the kittens were fully weaned. I arranged to bring them to Kitty City the day before we left on our trip.
Since it is a two-hour drive from the cabin to Kitty City, we decided to leave right after breakfast. We had Molly’s cat carrier and the one we’d bought when we brought Chester home from Minnesota. We planned to put Mama and one kitten in the larger carrier and the other two kittens in the small one.
We put Mama in the big carrier and zipped it shut. Then we tried to catch the kittens. They seemed to know something was going to happen that they wouldn’t like. I felt as if I had a sign on my
shirt that said: WARNING! IF THIS PERSON CATCHES YOU, YOU’LL HAVE TO RIDE IN THE CAR FOR TWO HOURS. They hid under the workbench; they ran behind the recycle bin. Kitten Three, the one who had always been most scared, kept going inside a partially assembled player piano.
We chased those kittens for nearly an hour before we finally caught the two calicos. The tuxedo kitten was still in the piano and no amount of banging on the sides had budged him. Meanwhile, poor Mama was zipped into her carrier, waiting. We couldn’t keep her confined much longer, so we decided to take Mama and the two kittens to Kitty City. Then we’d come home and continue to try to coax Kitten Three out of the piano.
“If we get him yet today, we’ll make the drive again,” Carl said. “If we don’t, we can keep trying overnight, and take him up there first thing in the morning, on our way out of town. Worst case would be we have to hire one of the neighbor kids to come in every day while we’re gone.”
Off we went, with the two kittens in one carrier and Mama in the other, all three of them howling in protest. Susan had a large cage ready and waiting for them in her office, where it would be quiet. We thanked her, explained about the third kitten, and made the long drive back home.
As soon as we walked into the workshop, we saw Kitten Three dash out of the piano and hide behind some shelves, but when we tried to reach him, he escaped and returned to the piano.
“I have an idea,” Carl said. “Give me a few minutes.”
I was more than happy to go in the house and do something else for a while. I still needed to finish getting ready for our trip. We were leaving in the morning and I’d spent the whole day chasing after kittens.
Half an hour later, Carl came to get me. He had rigged up an old wooden organ pipe to act as a tunnel. The hollow pipe was about four inches in diameter, plenty big enough for a kitten to go into. He had one end of the pipe fastened to the piano, in the spot where the kitten always ran out. The other end of the pipe rested inside the cat carrier.
“Get ready,” Carl said. “He’s in the piano now but I’m going to make such a racket that he’ll run into the organ pipe and out the other end. When he does, you need to close the carrier right away so he can’t get out.”
I knelt beside the carrier. Carl picked up an empty five-gallon paint can, held it next to the piano where the kitten was hiding, and started banging on the can with a wrench. At the same time, he yelled and stomped his feet. It was enough to make me want to run out of the workshop, and it worked on the kitten, too. He streaked into that organ pipe and out the other end as if he was running for his life, which I’m sure he thought he was. I yanked the end of the carrier into position and started to zip it shut, but before I got it zipped all the way, that kitten poked his head up, sprang through the opening, and ran under the workbench. I couldn’t believe my eyes!
“I missed him,” I said. “He went into the carrier but I didn’t zip it fast enough.”
To his credit, all Carl said was, “We’ll have to wait until he goes back in the piano, and then try again.”
“What if he doesn’t go in the piano again? You scared him good.”
“He’s been hiding in that piano ever since he got here,” Carl said. “He’ll go back in sooner or later.”
I fervently hoped it was sooner.
An hour passed, and then Carl came to tell me that it was time to try again.
I went back to the workshop and we both took our positions.
“Ready?” he asked.
I nodded. My heart raced. My mouth felt dry. I leaned over the carrier with one hand already on the zipper. I had to catch Kitten Three this time.
Carl banged on the paint can and yelled. The kitten raced into the organ pipe, and out the other end. This time, as soon as Kitten Three landed in the carrier, I tipped the carrier on its end with the open side up, and held it that way while I zipped it closed. Success!
I looked at the tiny creature who had nearly outsmarted us. He was about six inches long with wide green eyes and a halo of fuzz. His tail was the size of my pinkie finger. “This would have been a lot easier,” I told him, “if you had let us catch you when we caught your siblings.”
We piled into the car and made the long drive back to Kitty City. Susan greeted us with a nasty-looking red scratch that angled across her cheek from the corner of one eye almost to her mouth. “What happened to you?” I asked.
“Mama got me.”
I stared at her. The cat I had assured Susan was mellow and loving had done that? “I’m so sorry,” I said. “She always acted friendly with us.”
Susan laughed. “She was scared to suddenly find herself in a whole new place. When I reached into the cage, I think she was defending her kittens.”
“I feel as if my child has misbehaved in school,” I said.
“Everyone who works in animal rescue gets scratched or bitten occasionally,” Susan said.
Mama seemed overjoyed to see Kitten Three. Maybe she had scratched Susan because she was upset that one of her babies was missing.
We left as planned the next morning. While we traveled, we often talked about Mama and her kittens, and wondered how they were doing. As soon as we got back home, I called Susan.
“All three kittens have been adopted,” she told me, “but Mama is still here.”
That surprised me. “Mama was the friendliest one,” I said, and then added, “except for that one incident with your cheek.”
Susan reminded me of what I already knew: “People want the cute little kittens. It’s lots harder to find homes for older cats.”
She assured me that Mama was thriving in Kitty City, enjoying the attention of the volunteers, and hurrying forward to welcome any visitors. Although she was featured on the shelter’s web page and taken to off-site adoption events, no one ever chose her. I sent a case of kitty-num-num and a selection of cat toys in her honor on Mother’s Day.
Eventually, Mama became the Official Greeter at Kitty City. I’m sorry that Mama never got a family of her own, but her life was far better than when she lived in the forest. She had plenty of food, a warm bed, and loving hands to stroke her fur.
Sad Farewells
The animals brought tears as well as joy to our lives. Our beloved Daisy died, at the age of sixteen. We buried her by the blueberry bush where she used to steal blueberries out of our buckets when we were picking them.
Then one evening when we called Pete and Molly home, only Molly came. Pete had been with us on our walk an hour earlier, but he didn’t come when we called, and we couldn’t find him in any of his favorite places.
We didn’t panic right away. We assumed he had caught a mouse and wasn’t hungry for kitty-num-num. Pete had always been an independent cat who was capable of ignoring our calls while he watched us search for him.
When it got dark, we began to worry. We left all the outdoor lights on, and circled the property with flashlights before we went to bed. I got up several times in the night, hoping to find him waiting on the porch. He wasn’t there.
“Here, Pete! C’mon, Pete!” My calls drifted into the darkness, but my only answer was the hoot of an owl.
Molly and Pete
By morning, we were frightened. Carl spent the entire day tromping through the woods on our own property and in the forest behind us, searching for him. I am a polio survivor, and my legs are too weak to walk easily through underbrush, but I hiked along the paved road that runs in front of our place and down the old coal-mining railroad bed that’s used as a public trail on the back side of our property, calling and looking.
I alerted our closest neighbors and asked them to watch for a big brown and white cat. One of them said, “Oh, we lost a cat when we first moved out here, too. We think a coyote got him.” That didn’t make me feel any better.
We printed posters with Pete’s picture on them, and hung one on the community bulletin board at the post office where we get our mail. (There is no U.S. Postal Service delivery where I live.) We put one at the post office in a nea
rby small town, too. We took one to the Pierce County Humane Society, in case someone found Pete and took him there, and we left them at local veterinary clinics.
The Humane Society has a phone number to call to hear a recorded description of all animals they took in that day, including any strays they picked up. I called the number every few hours.
By evening, we feared the worst. Pete liked to sit on top of a fence post at the back of our property, near the gate. Had he jumped down on the wrong side of the fence? Had a coyote seen him and pounced? Had a dog chased him down the trail and into the woods, and now Pete was lost in the forest?
Carl continued to search every day, thinking that if a predator had caught Pete, he might at least find Pete’s collar and ID tag, but he found nothing.
I listened to the Humane Society’s recording every day for months. It broke my heart to think that something bad, and probably painful, had happened to Pete, and I was filled with guilt that we had not kept him indoors, where he would have been safe.
We had tried. A few years before we moved to the cabin, we had read statistics that showed indoor cats live much longer and are healthier than cats who are allowed outside. We decided to keep Pete and Molly indoors. We walked them on leashes when we traveled in the motor home, and they both seemed to like that, so we reasoned we would do the same year round.
Molly adapted right away; Pete never did. For six months, Pete spent most of his time trying to get out. He gazed longingly out the windows, often pawing at the glass, and meowing. Every time a door opened, he streaked toward the opening and tried to sneak through. No matter how often I walked him on a leash, it was never enough. He acted as if our house was a prison and his only goal in life was to escape.
We finally decided he was miserable as an indoor cat, and we let him go outside again, calling him home every night. I know Pete was happier that way, and since it didn’t seem fair to let Pete go out and keep Molly in, we let her go out again, too. Of course, if we had kept Pete inside from the day we adopted him, when he was a six-week-old kitten, he would probably have been content as an indoor cat, but at that time we did not know the statistics.