Wow! We have had quite the last couple of weeks! First off, Andrew and I got addicted (very, very addicted) to the TV series called Heroes. For those of you that have seen the show LOST, you will understand. You just have to keep watching and if you miss any of the last episodes you have no hope of understanding anything else in the series. We made it through the first season on Netflix in about five days. Any spare time was dedicated to that show. The second season wasn’t as good and by the time we got to the third season we just wanted the show to end. Finally at the end of the third season it gave us an ending that we could end with and we turned it off before the fourth season could even start. It’s nice to be able to get back to life.
Andrew and my mother finally consented to letting me get a pet (Andrew and I are living in my parents’ house while they are on their mission, so any new furry residents have to be cleared by them too). We decided that we couldn’t handle the time commitment it took to raise a puppy right now but that a kitten might not be so bad. Andrew said he hates cats but would put up with one if I really wanted. I did, so he and I searched Craig’s List for free kittens. We found some that seemed to be the perfect age to try and survive life out on the farm. I figured one kitten would get lonely and bored when we started up classes, so I pleaded with Andrew to get two kittens. He said he didn’t care as long as he didn’t have to mess with them much. We went to Walmart and got two little cat toys, two flea/flea egg/mosquito collars and cat food. I was so excited! We had arranged to the family to meet us at a gas station close to our house for a kitten drop. When I had talked to the people with the kittens I asked them to bring their most durable kitten due to the dangers for cats that live out in Hibbard. They brought a boy kitten with black and white spots and a girl kitten that looked like a gray tiger but had pointy tuffs of fur on the tips of her ears making her look as though she were part Links or Bobcat. We bought them home and put the collars on them. I have never seen something so spasmatic in my life. They would be walking or playing with the toys we got them, then suddenly flip around and try to either itch their collar off or bite them off. It was too close to their head for them to be able to bite it so they looked completely ridiculous! Don’t worry I made sure that the collars weren’t too tight. Andrew named the boy Meekus , like off of the movie Zoolander. And I named the girl Mittens, off of the movie Blot. They are such funny kittens and even softened Andrew’s heart. He actually admitted that he liked them!
Oh the stories I could tell about those cats…. Once I was standing out on our deck with Andrew. He and I were facing each other and I was wearing somewhat flowy pajama pants. There was a slight breeze that blew the legs of my pants back and forward. (I was so unaware to the danger I was in from the prowling kitten, whom was stalking ever closer.) Andrew and I were in conversation when in mid sentence I let out a piercing scream of shock and pain. It felt like little knifes had been systematically plunged into my upper calf! Then the knifes started to leap higher up my leg! I collapsed and smashed the maniacal Meekus who was still attempting to attack the ruffling pajama pants. Poor Andrew had no idea that the kitten had just tried to rid the world of my flowy pants (and my right leg along with it). He had just been deafened by my ear splitting scream and witnessed an attempt on our new kitten’s life. Meekus and Andrew now sat there looking at me as if I was the one who was crazy! It was all too much and broke down laughing. I laughed till tears were streaming down my face and Andrew still had no idea what had just happened! When I could breathe again I told Andrew what his kitten had done. We laughed for another three minutes.
Last Sunday Andrew and I were sitting out on our deck with the kittens watching the sun set. It was so peaceful and quiet. Then out of nowhere there was a high pitch cry of a kitten. We looked down at the kittens snuggled up on our laps. The cry came again but it wasn’t from our cats. We got up and started following the noise. It lead us out to an old two level play house in the trees of our back yard. I hadn’t been inside it for years and the latter to the upper level had long since been destroyed. In its place was a flimsy little metal latter. The cry was coming from somewhere in the top of the play house and the kitten that was admitting the cries sounded as if it were in pain. I climbed up the wobbly latter into the top section through countless spider webs. Once I was in the top I looked around. It was defiantly where the cries were coming from but there was no kitten to be seen. The only thing in there, other than me, was a wooden play stove. I bent down and tried to lose the latch on the oven. The cries started to come faster and more desperately but for the life of me I couldn’t get the rusty latch open. I pulled the oven away from the wall and found that there was no back to the oven. I looked inside and saw a little fuzzy kitten no bigger than a mouse edging around the inside of the wooden oven. I scooped it up and gave it to Andrew so I could get out of the spider infested play house. We warmed up a rice bag and created a bed for the kitten. This calmed it down a considerable amount but it was still crying. We guessed it was hungry. I knew we shouldn’t give it cow milk because that kind of milk would give a kitten diarrhea to the point of killing it. (I had tried it without knowing what would happen before and to my terror I had watched the kitten I was trying to save die.) We jumped on Facebook and sent out an SOS. Then we called our neighbors who might have had to save a kitten or two in their time living out in Hibbard. We were told that in a pinch cow milk would work but that in the morning we should try to get a kitten formula. I started feeding it warm cow milk while Andrew got back on Facebook. He found that my friend had posted a web site for new born kitten care. According to the web site we needed to feed it ever three to four hours and help it defecate. Bla. Andrew did not want to get up in the middle of the night to take care of the kitten, so I took the night watch. By morning I wanted the kitten in someone else’s loving care. I was exhausted. I sent a mass text out and one of my friends sent me a number to one of her friend who might be able to help. I called right away! The girl said that her cat had just had a batch of kittens and it might be close to the same age. With any luck her mother cat would adopt the kitten and raise it like her own. We immediately jumped in the car and sped over to her house. The second we put the kitten in with the other kittens it stopped crying (it was the first time it had shut up in nine hours). The mother cat came over and started licking the kitten like it had been hers all along. Andrew and I were so relieved. When we got home we went out to Meekus and Mittens. We sat there and just petted them, thrilled that they weren’t crying at the top of their lungs.
Yesterday Andrew and I were sitting in to living room looking out the window at the back yard. I was messing with something when Andrew said in an odd voice “I think the kittens are twenty feet up in that tree….” Apparently Andrew had seen a dark shape out of the corner of his eye. He had thought that it was a really big bird but then he looked closer and saw that the “bird” looked a lot like Meekus…. That the bird was Meekus and right below him was Mittens! They were almost all the way up a tree and Mittens was trying to climb down head first. She kept almost falling but catching herself right before she went plummeting to the ground. Meekus was frozen in place, clinging to the tree for dear life. I honestly think that cat is scared of heights. Andrew and I rushed outside to catch Mittens if she really did fall. Then we tried to get Meekus down. There was no way that he would retract his claws that he had deeply set in the tree. Andrew tried everything he could think of but he ended up barrowing the neighbors latter (that was too short) and half climbed up the tree to rip Meekus from the top branches. That night I think I figured out what they were doing up the tree in the first place. I went out on our deck to put the kittens away for the night (so that they wouldn’t get eaten by skunk, tom cats, dog, or coyotes) and saw that the deck was covered with feathers. Meekus was already asleep in the big dog box/kennel we had converted into their bed. Mittens came running up a trail of feathers floating off of her. Now the score is even. Meekus caught a mouse and Mittens got a bird… here’s hoping she’ll stick to birding on the ground instead of trying to catch them in the trees!
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