I Think of Something Useful

Today I brought my shop vac over to my friends' Hannah* and Steve's* about-to-be old house, for them to use when they finish getting their goods and chattels out.

And I got to see the kittens.

Turns out, the calico isn't a calico. It's a brown tabby. He and his pinky-yellow brother (or sister? We don't know yet!) have been moved into a large doggie kennel borrowed from Steve's parents.

I saw them hunkered there in the middle of the family room floor, and I thinks to myself, I thinks, "Gosh, they really must be in the way with all this moving going on. And the new house isn't ready yet and Hannah and Steve and Stevie* and Letitia* are living with the grandparents until it is. How can they manage the kittens as well?"

So I've offered to take the kitties home to my house, at least until the family gets settled out in the country. And Hannah* has gladly agreed. Their two grown-up cats are enough to think about at the moment as it is.

Minding Other People's Business

Yesterday, I got a call from my friend Hannah*.

"Steve and I came home yesterday, it smelled like we had a gas leak in the basement."

"Oh, no! That's the last thing you need! The closing with the new owners' is next week, isn't it? Is the house ok? How are the kittens? You called the gas company right away, didn't you?"

"Yes. They came out and it wasn't a gas leak. It was the kittens, peeing all over the basement."

"That's terrible!" And helpful me, I repeated what I'd read about how if you have feral kittens loose inside, like in a basement or whatever, they'll just become indoor feral cats . . .

Yes, maybe, but at the moment they'd had to trap the kittens all over again, and what were they going to do about the smell?

Good luck to them for it. I couldn't think of any sure-fire cures for cat urine stink when we were talking yesterday. But today I minded my friends' business royally by slipping an Internet printout on how to domesticate feral kittens into their mail slot when I was on my way home from church. They were still at their own church and I had to run off to an afternoon get-together at another friend's. So I have no idea if they've found the advice useful or not.

Wouldn't blame them if they pitched it in the nearest black garbage bag. Heaven knows, packing and moving and renovating doesn't leave them much if any time to attend to prescribed methods of feral cat taming.

Home Wildlife Preserve

I've heard from my friend Hannah* about the feral kittens they rescued from the barn on their new property.

The other day, she and her four-year-old daughter Letitia* took the fluffy pinky-yellow one to the nursing home where her mother lives to show her the new kitten. It got loose and it took six people to catch it. But other than that, it was perfectly sweet: bright-eyed, willing to be held, and purring like a blender on "puree."

This is not what I read on the feral kittens websites. They all say, Go slow. Wrap them in a towel to keep them calm while you pet them. One person handling the kittens at a time. No sudden moves or loud noises. No small children within ten miles. I keep my mouth shut about the feral kitten websites. If they're doing all right while breaking all the "rules," more power to them. I'm interested the kittens' welfare, but it ain't my house, it ain't my family, and they ain't my kittens.

But then she told me that they'd decided to just let them run loose in the basement. Um, well, I suggested, they might not want to do that . . . "I read something on line that said if you do that, they'll just be indoor feral cats. They need to be around people to get tamed."

Hannah said she'd keep that in mind, but her husband Steve* thought the basement was a good idea. Keeps the kittens out of the way while they're packing upstairs.

No luck yet capturing the gray kitten, she told me.

"Are you sure it wasn't the calico you got already and just looked gray in its hidey-hole in the barn?"

"No, we're pretty sure there's a third one."

If there is, time is running out. I can't go help look: too much that simply has to be done the next couple of days.

Tooth and Claw, or Dying from the Kyoot

The ending of my last entry was really lame, wasn't it? All that sentimental tripe about the poor rescued feral kitten going home with my friend to be pampered and loved.

Will you forgive me if I plead that by the time she took the kitty home and I finished the blog entry, I was hopelessly, brainlessly shattered?

And that hey, the kitten did allow us to pick him up and hold him, purring away like a BMW the whole time?

But since then, I've been online, looking up the care, feeding, and domesticating of feral kittens. And oy vey, have my friend Hannah* and her family taken on a task! And right in the middle of trying to pack up and move.

A double task, too, since Monday or Tuesday, they trapped and brought home the pinky-yellow kitten's littermate: a calico, they say.

And there might still be a gray kitten hiding out in their barn. They're trying to trap it, too.

Two, even three feral kittens? In a disrupted household with a six-year-old and a four-year-old? Oy vey, again.

Everything I read on the Web tells me that feral kittens can be extremely dangerous. That they should be handled only with armpit-high welder's gloves. That they're like little animated cacti and harder to control than the Main Stream Media sniffing out a possible Republican scandal.

What on earth could possibly be going on in Hannah and Steve's* household? I haven't heard from Hannah since late Monday. She said she'd call me when they captured the gray-- maybe I'd like to adopt it, she said. I've called and left messages but I haven't heard back. Are all the family lying on the floor, ripped to shreds by the Killer Kittens? To hear what the feral cat sites on the Internet say, nothing's more possible!

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*Fake names!

Going on a Mission

This evening around 8:50 PM when I was home listening to The White Horse Inn and eating my dinner, my friend Hannah* showed up unexpectedly at my door and said:

"I came to ask if you'd go on a mission with me."

Both of us being Christians, she says "mission" and I immediately think Brazil! Mexico! West Virginia!

But for that, she wouldn't appear unexpectedly on a rainy Sunday night. It must be something more immediate.

"Sure," I said. "What is it?"

"Remember those kittens in the barn at our new house? The ones whose mother we found dead? We caught one and put it in a room in the house till we can take it to the vet's tomorrow."

Yes, the house they're working on, the house that at present has no interior doors. So they put a piece of drywall across the opening to the cat room for a baby gate to keep the little one in.

"But Stevie* [her six-year-old son] brought his little friend from across the way in to see the kitty-- and they forgot to put the drywall back."

And the kitten escaped and disappeared, most likely down a hole in the floor in a neighboring room.

"We're afraid it might be trapped down there and die. Steve* [her husband] is home at the old house with the kids. I got one of those cage traps earlier and baited it with tuna to see if it'll get the kitten to come out. I need to find it tonight: I'm afraid it will starve. But I don't want to go out there by myself in the dark. Will you come with me?"

I was game, but not optimistic. I refrained from telling her the story of that cat that got stuck in the wall of that shop in Manhattan a year or so back, where it took everything short of the Army Corps of Engineers to get the moggie out. Would tuna work for a kitten that might not even be weaned? Would a feral cat let itself be caught, no matter how hungry it was?

I foresaw a long vigil. Near misses and clever if panicked feline escapes. Weariness and scratches. Frustration and lost hope.

I kept my mouth shut.

We packed up the flashlights, a splash of cream in a plastic container, and the freeze-dried salmon treats, and off we sallied through the fog and the pouring rain to undertake the Great Kitten Rescue.

By the time we arrived at the farm, the rain had slackened. But it was still dark and uncertain outside, and even darker and more uncertain within-- somebody had turned off the electricity at the mains.

Upstairs we ventured by the beam of our flashlights. Who knew what long search lay before us? Never mind, we were On a Mission.

. . . Well, actually, no long search lay before us. The mission was accomplished: the tuna had done the trick, and the dirty but fluffy little mog was hunkered down in the humane trap, probably thinking, "I were has tuna-- too I can has cheezburgr?"

We took the little one back to my place, where we decanted him out of the trap into my bathtub, and thence into my own cat's carrier, to be taken home to be cleaned, deflea'd, vetted, and loved.
But not before the kitten indulged himself in the cream we'd brought, while my own mog and dog kept curious and whimpering watch outside the bathroom door.

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*All names changed!

Enough Already!

I'm nervous.

I've got family coming to stay this weekend, and by then I've got to train my dog Llewellyn not to bark for no reason during the night. I can hardly take it myself. How can I expect them to?

His bark is prodigious. It's a loud, resonant, astounding, baying Beagle bark. As it shatters the silence, it gives warning of an entire squadron of invading Martians, of a large pride of lions prowling the streets, of a shipload of pirates out for booty and blood-- nothing less.

But it never is anything. It's bad enough for me to be exploded out of a sound sleep three or four times a night. But what effect will it have on my parents, who are in their late 70s, early 80s? If I can't convince my mutt to keep it quiet, I may have to foot the bill for a hotel.

I've tried the technique where you distract the dog from barking by calling his name and petting him when he comes to you quietly. But I'm afraid Llewellyn thinks he's being complimented for scaring off whatever-it-is so well.

So I'm trying another tack, from another training expert. This one recommends that you rebuke the dog firmly with a one-word command (Llewellyn understands "Enough!"), then studiously and silently ignore him. My boy's a little independent, so I'm substituting glaring at him silently and pointedly.

It seems to work pretty well once I've gotten over the initial shock and remembered the magic word "Enough!" That gets his attention, and it's surprising how soon he quiets down.

"BUH-HARK!! BUH-HARK!! BARK-BARK-BARK-BARK!!!"

"Qu- huh- Enough!"

"BARK! bark!"

(Glaring look.)

"Bark. Bark?"

(Further glaring look.)

"Ruff. Ruff. Uh . . . ?"

(Glaring look maintained, while trying not to laugh out loud.)

This is working well enough, when the lights are on and we can see each other. But at night in the dark . . .

The training manual says to have a squirt gun handy for just such occasions. And wasn't I at Big Lots this afternoon? Didn't I forget to see if they had any water pistols?

Five more nights we have to solve this problem. I don't want to be calling the EMTs because my dog has given my parents heart attacks.

A Big Help

Rhadwen likes to help me work on my computer. Here she is, helping me write a sermon.

She'd help me even more if she wouldn't lie on my left forearm as I'm trying to type. But she points out that my fingers can still move.

Besides, she says, she isn't that heavy-- aren't I the one who always says she's Mostly All Hair?

Urgh.