Bye, Bye Kittens

I've been bouncing between Los Angeles and the Midwest since last Fall thanks to the Holidays, the writers' strike, an unsteady living situation back West, and (lately) a couple of script projects that have taken me to Missouri and back again. So I've been crashing at my Parents' place in Indiana, an old farmhouse with a lot of land.

Since I was little my family and I have always been animal lovers. I know I've mentioned that before a couple of times on KOS. We've taken in dogs and cats, and even when I left for California my Mom and Dad continued to feed and care for the strays the Rednecks would dump in the adjacent wooded areas. I do not know why people do that -- dump cats and dogs off to die, or to be other people's problems -- but they do, particularly the further out you go into the country.

When I came back in their was a new litter of dumped kittens hanging around. Combined efforts over the Winter managed to get two in-doors and later fixed. The third ... something awful happened to her in the past because she just would not come near human hands, settling instead for an old doghouse in the garage.

You do not need a biology degree to figure out what happens next. Kitty-O-Me (as my Mom had taken to calling her) got pregnant and eventually had five kittens in a doghouse on a stormy morning early last week. The plan was to wait until they were all weened and take the kittens to the Human Society, and then have Kitty-O-Me to a vet to get spayed and remain as the local garage cat.

Then Thursday, late in the Afternoon, we discovered that the smallest of the litter had died. Poor little black and gold fellow barely had a day on the planet before he (or she) went. Another kitten that resembled the one that just passed away was having a rough time breathing and I knew he probably wouldn't make the night. The next morning my Mom told me two more had died. The one that I suspected would pass on, and a black kitten who seemed fine the Afternoon before.

We all took it hard. I took it hard. Sure, kittens die sometimes. Just happens. It had never happened to me, or My Mom and Dad before, but we all knew that with a big litter sometimes... But three in less than two days felt surreal. I felt like I had been kicked in the teeth and punched in the groin by some strange karma. You do the best you can for a stray cat and her kittens that no one else seemed to give a crap about, and you are "rewarded" like this ... Three dying in quick succession, well thanks.

I've always been one of those people that waivered on the razor's edge of permanent despair. I like to think I see the world as it is, or maybe I just see the world as I like to see it, and that's a place that is filled with remarkably cruel, bittersweet beauty but in the end a world were nothing anyone does means anything in the grand scheme. I find myself always fighting urges to fall completely into a nihilistic hedonism that tunes out everything except the most immediate means of gratification. The random deaths of three kittens was not doing anything for my disposition or my typically grim view of life.

Kitty-O-Me seemed worse. I say seemed because I don't know, no one does. I can guess and, with a healthy glob of my own anthropomorphism, and say "Oh, that cat is depressed" or "That dog is sad", but one never really knows what an animal is thinking. But Kitty-O-Me definitely seemed ... something beyond sad, or depressed, like a postpartum shellshock. I guess it would be the sort of things human parents experienced before the Industrial Age when six of their eight kids suddenly die of whatever people died of back in those yonder years. Kitty-O-Me did not want to go near the doghouse until her dead kittens were buried and all the hay that was packed in for insulation was removed. Kitty-O-Me finally seemed to come around when my Mom held up her remaining babies, squealing for Milk and Momma. She returned to the doghouse to nurse the remaining babies. Worries of orphaned, two day old kittens abated and plans were set in motion to make sure these remaining kittens would have a shot at a decent life.

Once the two kittens and Kitty-O-Me had made it through the weekend we'd go out collect her and her kittens in a pet carrier and bring them inside, keep them isolated in a spare room until the kitties were weened, and then most likely adopt them.

Here-in lies the great danger whenever you get emotionally invested in an animal that is mostly ruled by winsome ways of nature. Their plans and your plans are not planned on the same page, or drafted from the same playbook. Nature's and instinct's often win.

This Saturday as I was playing Ninja Gaiden II and sipping a Diet Dr. Pepper (yes, I know, I am a man-child and I make no apologies) my Mom came pounding at my door. Apparently, as my Dad was trimming trees, he spotted Kitty-O-Me making a completely random break from the garage with her remaining kittens, secreting them off into the woods. A couple acres of trees and brush that once she got them into it, there would be no way anyone could ever find two tiny kittens. We will keep looking though. Well, I will, at least until Monday or Tuesday when I have to leave again.

The rejection of a stray cat after emotionally exhausting ourselves for days trying to take care of her felt a gut punch. Quickly followed by another gut punch when Kitty-O-Me silently returned back to the garage sans kittens like nothing happened, like all those kittens never existed. I hope she goes back to the woods, and has simply hidden her kittens for safe keeping, but the expression on that cat's face reads something chilling. She's orphaned those poor kittens in the woods where no one can get to them, I know it.

I've got nothing for you. I feel like I've told one of Aesop's fables without a proper moral to tie it all up. All I got for you is the obvious tropes that every Goth-y high schooler knows. You know the ones; about how life isn't fair and nature being cruel. Personally I do not know what to think, or make of this entire sad story. Just life I guess.