Cunning Kitty Cats

My dad often quoted from his elementary primer–at least bits of it he liked to remember. What he remembered best was a ditty about cats. This would have been in the late 1920’s. He always said he learned to read to the “tune” of “Baby Ray had three cunning kitty cats,” a line from a story in his first-grade reader. I thought about his recitations today as I stepped out onto my front porch to peep once again at the five kittens we now harbor, thanks to our feeding a raggedy, feral cat we simply couldn’t ignore.

The cute, little ferals are bundles of black, white, and gray-striped fluff. I’ve always had a soft spot for cats, and my husband has a soft spot for all critters, including lizards and snakes. In short, we are a soft touch. A few months ago, our cat Brigit died. She was a rescued feral. We had her for twelve or thirteen years. When we first took her in, she was an angry little ball of fur, and she never quite cozied up to other people as she did to my husband and me. One of our sons used to call her el gato diablo–often with good cause. But we cared about her, and she cared about us…a good exchange I guess. When she died, we decided to have no more pets. The year before, we had lost the dog we’d had even longer than Brigit. We were done worrying about pets. Now, here we are with a feral mother cat and her five offspring.

The mother has become much more domestic of late. The first time we saw her was this past winter, before Brigit died. We’d spy her out in the backyard at night, eating bread or some such we had pitched out for the birds. We couldn’t bear watching the scraggly thing search about for something to eat. We started pouring some of Brigit’s food in bowls on the patio. Over the months, the cat appeared and disappeared at intervals. When we thought she’d finally left for good–a secret relief–she’d suddenly reappear. Not long after Brigit left us, she came back to stay.

Now she is comfortable with us. She rubs our legs when we go out, lolls about on the patio, looks inside the house through the French doors, and lies near us when we sit out-of-doors. When I first realized she was pregnant, I worried about her. I thought about trying to make her a nesting box but then figured a feral cat knew more about protecting her babies than I did. I was sure she’d end up at the barn during delivery and was comforted by the thought. I was wrong. She hid them, instead, in the flowerbed next to our front porch. Large butterfly bushes and flowering stalks protect the site from two directions and the sides of the porch protect it from the others. She obviously found us trustworthy. We are allowed to stand on the porch just above the kittens and admire them to our hearts content. Torti–the mama–stands beside us, proud as a pumpkin, while we look.

It is July in Texas, so the temperature has been soaring of late. The last few days it has reached 109 degrees and above. So, we’ve put an oscillating fan on the porch beside their nest to cool them in the afternoon. It is a totally safe, encased tower-type thing. They seem to be thriving. We plan to keep taming Torti. When she is secure enough with us, we will try to get her to the veterinarian to be spayed. She has had a hard life so far, and we want better for her. We’ll see if we can eventually find good homes for her beautiful little kittens. If not, we may have plenty of mousers.

Please, everyone with a heart, do not take cats and kittens out into the countryside and throw them out. It is a tough, cruel life out there for domestic animals.