Walk to the spot where the toddler upstairs says she spotted “dragon babies,” which turn out to be a sleek black and orange cat and three small kittens – two orange and one black, behind the raised vegetable beds. Contact local animal shelters, none of whom have room. Bring a can of your own cats’ food, sit on the cement divider and open it. Feel the pairs of eyes staring at you through the snap peas and peppers before you see them, and watch them disappear back into the jungle of the backyard when you make eye contact. When the kittens approach you, speak to them gently, and offer them nuggets of food from your hand. Shake a bag of dry food so that they will learn to associate the sound of it with food and will come out from their hiding place when they hear it.
When they disappear, wonder where they went; when they don’t return for a week, worry. When they return in two weeks, but one of the kittens is missing – the friendliest one, feel responsible for whatever may have happened. Hope that he walked into the arms of a helpful stranger, but know that’s unlikely. Feel an irresistible urge to save them before any more kittens disappear, before the snow that’s been predicted in the 10 day forecast. Buy a cage. Set it up in the backyard with a plate of food inside, and watch in astonishment as they walk in, one by one, as if in answer to a formal invitation. Approach it carefully so they cannot hear you close the cage door shut. Feel a pang of guilt as the kittens climb frantically up the sides of the cage, trying to escape. Be surprised it was that easy to trap them. When it snows the next day, be glad you did.
Take them to the vet; learn that they have three kinds of worms, and the mother is slightly anemic. Have the mother spayed, and her ear tipped – a procedure where a small piece of the left ear is cut off to give a visual indicator that a feral animal has been trapped, neutered, and released. Be unsure of her future since you don’t know if she’ll be able to live indoors with your two other cats – a full-grown tabby and a half-grown grey and white cat, both adopted from the local no-kill shelter. Turn your home office into a rehabilitation center for the mother and her kittens; spend time there every day until the kittens instinctively come out of their hiding spot and climb into your lap, purring like tiny fur machines. Do not name them, for fear of growing too attached to them; call them simply “orange kitty,” “black kitty,” and “mama kitty.” Feel the emptiness when your next-door neighbor, who’d followed your progress in the backyard, and had conversations with you from the other side of the fence that separates your property from his, adopts orange kitty. Be surprised that although you are childless, it feels like losing a child. Stare out the window in the hopes of catching a glimpse of orange kitty sitting in the neighbor’s window, and feel your heart leap at the sight of him, then fall. When you find a home for black kitty, brace yourself for the loss. On the ride home from delivering black kitty to his new home, find yourself saying out loud: “next time I’m keeping him,” as if this were a dress rehearsal.
At home with mama kitty, resent her for being feral, for not allowing you to pick her up and hold her like the kittens did, for being difficult. Notice the only evidence that she lives in your office: the food in her dish disappears, and like a scatological miracle of transubstantiation, small turds appear in the litter box. Wonder if you will ever see her. Spend time in the office reading and doing paperwork in the hopes that she will grow used to your presence, and become impatient when she doesn’t. Contact a cat shelter for advice, and spend time drawing her out from under the bed with a cat toy that looks like a fishing rod with a feather at the end of it, which she follows with her eyes, but nothing else. Wonder about the parallels between mama kitty and yourself; you are also hard to reach and slow to trust. It takes months for you to feel comfortable at a new job, sometimes years, and coworkers are always surprised to find out that you perform in front of people, reading your material onstage in front of strangers, because they can’t picture it. The day she first reaches a paw up to bat the feather at the end of the toy, feel as proud as if you’d just watched your own child perform in a piano recital. Decide to keep her.
Note that your half-grown grey and white cat has connected with her: he still needs a mother, she’s been separated from her babies and needs someone to look after. Protect her from your tabby, who hisses at her mercilessly, even through closed doors. Try to reason with your tabby, say things like “you were once just like her, we found you in a shelter.”
Note the first time she lets you pet her, the first time you hear her purr, the first time she’s brave enough to cross the threshold of your office into the kitchen, the first time she dares to peer out the kitchen window. Become more attached to her than you thought was possible – worry about her when you are at work, and look forward to seeing her when you come home. Come to understand that she represents your secret self; the one you leave at home when you enter the world, the one nobody else ever sees, the one that if released back into the wild, would never return.
JH Palmer is a Chicago based writer and performer. From 2012-2017 she produced the live lit show That’s All She Wrote, and she has performed at numerous storytelling and live lit events, including The Moth, 2nd Story, Story Club, Write Club, and You’re Being Ridiculous. Her work has appeared in The Toast, Story Club Magazine, and Thread. She earned an MFA in creative nonfiction from Columbia College Chicago.
Photo courtesy Stocksnap
