Monday, July 09, 2007, 14:12
Wilderness Training
About 3 p.m. Sunday afternoon, the sky turned dark. And when I say dark, it was black. So dark we had to turn the lights on in the house. For the next two and a half hours, the sky alternated with flashes of lightning and the deep grumble of thunder.
Finally, at a little after 5 p.m., it started to rain, and as it has been doing all spring, it just poured.
Rain is good, of course. But when we get cloudbursts like that, the rain runs off and doesn't have a chance to soak in much. But -- rain of any kind is beneficial when you've been in a drought for three years. So I was glad to see the rain for rain's sake.
But I was also worried.
Two days ago, the old mother cat took all of the kittens out of the barn. Every year, she takes her kittens out on what I call "Wilderness Training" -- although I have also referred to it as a "Camping Trip" -- so if you put them both together, I suppose you could think of it as a Wilderness Training Camping Trip. As the rain poured from the sky in buckets, all I could think about was those poor little kittens, out in the rain somewhere.
Out and About
When the kittens are big enough, the mother cat takes them out and leaves them someplace. That's where the "wilderness training" comes in. Sometimes she takes them out for only a few days. But sometimes she takes them out and leaves them out for a week. That's the "camping trip" part of it.
The funny thing about it, I think, is that the mother cat comes back to the barn for something to eat but leaves her kittens out in the woods.
Anyway, this time around, for the first 24 hours, Little Sister didn't know where the kittens were, either. When I looked for them Saturday morning, Little Sister left her breakfast and came with me, calling and calling for them. I thought maybe they were all asleep under the grapevine in back of the barn. But there were no kittens to be seen anywhere. And I knew they were not sleeping on the hay. They would have come when I called, although at the very least, they would have come when Little Sister called.
That's when I first realized the old mother cat must have taken the six of them out for their first Wilderness Training Camping Trip.
Little Sister
Usually when the mother cat takes the kittens out I don't worry about them too much. She has always brought them all back, and they have been none the worse for the experience. The old mother cat has been down in the barn for seven years, so she's not a novice at taking kittens out on camping trips.
Saturday evening when we fed the horses, the old mother cat was in the barn for her supper, and when she left, she took Little Sister with her. This was a very good thing because Little Sister was full of milk and needed to be nursed. The kittens are about 10 weeks old now, but of course, they are still nursing their mothers.
Later on when we took the dogs for a walk after it had cooled off and was starting to get dark (it had cooled off to 87 degrees by then), we saw Little Sister at the corner of the dirt road, and she had one of the kittens with her, the little gray one. We gave two kittens away on July Fourth to a good friend of mine who writes for another newspaper, and now there are six left. A little tabby with an orange spot on her forehead, a long-haired mottled calico, the gray kitten and three black kittens.
When I went down to check on the horses before I went to bed Saturday evening, Little Sister and the gray kitten were in the barn, so I knew that at least one kitten was okay.
Spooked
It was while I was taking Pixie outside before I went to bed Saturday night that I got spooked to the point of where I felt a little breathless. That was also when I grew very worried about the kittens.
It was dark and quiet at about midnight. No wind. Nothing. Just the stars in the dark sky. I was waiting in the backyard for Pixie to come back from the side yard when I heard a noise from the pine trees about 20 feet from the yard.
At first I couldn't figure out what it was. Then it dawned on me.
Panting.
Like a dog panting.
It wasn't Pixie, though, because she had come back from the side yard and was sitting by my feet, woofing softly under her breath.
The hair stood up on the back of my neck, let me tell you. Because Pixie heard it, too. The sound of "something" panting.
I put Pixie back in the house, and then I grabbed Randy's huge flashlight -- the one that will light up the other end of the five-acre hayfield if we stand in the yard by the house.
I was pretty sure I knew what the panting was. It was either a coyote or a wolf.
The next-door neighbor, the one whose pasture is along the dirt road, lost a Jersey calf this spring to the wolves. At least she thinks that's what happened to it. The calf simply disappeared when it was a few days old. We have at least one pair of timber wolves in the area. And maybe dozens of coyotes.
Bright Light
I stood in the backyard by the pine trees and turned on the flashlight. But of course I didn't see anything. I was hoping the bright light was enough to scare away whatever was panting in the pine trees not far from the house. It bothered me more than it might have otherwise, seeing as the sound of panting was coming from the area where I thought the kittens might not be too far away.
Sunday morning the kittens were not back home yet. When Randy and I took Charlie for a short walk up the dirt road, we looked for them but didn't find them.
And it was hot Sunday. As hot it was Saturday afternoon and Friday afternoon. Sweltering heat at 95 degrees with a dewpoint of 78. We put Charlie into his kennel in the basement when we returned so he could rest where it was cool. Charlie didn't protest coming inside. In fact, he was quite eager to come inside.
Then at 5 p.m. Sunday it began to rain. I was working on Rural Route 2 News when Randy came in and said he was going out to feed the horses. Five minutes later he came back to the house on the run and galloped into my office.
"Kittens!" he gasped. "The kittens are back!"
"All of them?" I said.
"Yes," he panted. "I think so."
I went to the kitchen to mix up some canned cat food and kitten chow. The kittens had been gone for 48 hours, so I knew they would be hungry.
When I got down to the barn, the kittens were more than ready for something to eat. I counted them, and that's when I realized one was missing. The little tabby girl kitten was not among all of the rest of them.
"There's one missing," I said to Randy. "It's the little tabby girl kitten."
We looked around the barn for her, and out in the lean-to and under the grapevine in back of the barn.
But there was no little tabby kitten to be seen anywhere.
Randy looked at the mother cats eating their supper.
"Momma Kitty!" he said sternly. "Go back out and find the other one. You can't just leave one out there!"
"Please go out and find her," I said to the mother cats.
Search Party
After I had given the kittens some food, I went to the house for a jacket and a cap to keep the rain off my glasses. Rain was still falling at a fairly steady pace. Randy and I and Charlie went out to look for the little tabby kitten. She is very shy, and even around the barn when she can't find the others, she is terrified and calling for them.
We walked up and down the road in the area where I thought the kittens might have been. In fact, Randy and I and Charlie made three or four trips back out there to see if we could find the tabby kitten.
We never did find her.
When I went out to check on the horses before I went to bed, I was hoping that the tabby kitten would be in the barn. But she still was not there.
If the kitten is all right, I *hope* the old mother cat will go back out looking for the poor little thing. Wilderness Training Camping Trips are fine -- but I would just as soon that the old mother cat brought them *all* back instead of leaving one behind.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Saturday, July 07, 2007, 06:34
Dumb and Dumber
I have decided that it is not a very good idea to mow the lawn with a push mower when it is sunny and 90 degrees outside. Especially not in the middle of the afternoon when it's the hottest.
That's what I did Friday afternoon. I mowed part of the lawn behind the barn and around the garden with the push mower when it was 90 degrees in the middle of the afternoon.
It was the dumbest idea I've had in a long time, I must say.
Not only was it hot, but I also insisted on mowing right behind the barn, where the sun bouncing off the barn wall makes it particularly hot.
I haven't had to mow in a long time because it has been so dry that the lawn has not hardly grown at all -- except next to the garden and behind the barn where it gets shade until the afternoon -- and over the drain field -- and a few other places.
And I didn't decide to just mow, either. No, I had to get the rake out and rake up the clippings and put them on the garden. And then I had to get the weed whacker out to do a little trimming.
By the time I was finished with the section behind the barn and around the garden, I was dripping wet with the sweat. Even the bandanna I had tied around my forehead to keep the sweat out of my eyes was dripping wet with sweat. When I came in the house, I was able to wring out my bandanna into the kitchen sink.
I don't believe I have ever had to wring out one of my bandannas before.
Unfortunately, I'm only about a third done with the lawn. And it's supposed to be even hotter this weekend.
I think maybe I will wait until Saturday evening when it's cooler out to work on some more mowing. That would be the smart thing to do, anyway.
Guinevere -- My silver tabby 16-year-old cat Guinevere still has a swollen face. She is finished with her second round of antibiotics now for a sinus infection, but her face is still quite swollen. Her breathing is snuffly, too. But she's still pretty cheerful, all things considered.
I have not taken her back to the vet yet. The vet looks at her, sees a 16-year-old cat, is convinced she has cancer and won't do anything else for her. I have started Guinevere on an anti-inflammatory to see if that will help for the swelling. She gets 1 drop every three days.
The anti-inflammatory is the same medication Charlie got last year when he was in so much pain from the abscess. He took much more than 1 drop every three days. Charlie got 70 drops a day. It is given 1 drop per pound per day for dogs and 1 drop total every three days for cats. That's because cats have such a different metabolism than other animals.
If there's nothing else I can do for her, at least I can try to reduce the pain (if she's feeling pain) and maybe reduce some of the inflammation. Guinevere does not act as if her face is painful. She keeps rubbing her cheeks against things, the way cats do to "mark" it as their own and bumping her forehead against my hand, the way cats do when they want to say "I love you." I am thinking that if Guinevere's face were terribly painful, she would not be rubbing her cheeks on things and bumping things with her forehead. Then again, what do I know?
LeAnn R. Ralph