by crystal taylor
One Of The Trials Of Life
When I moved into our new house with my little brother and parents I wasn’t so sure about it right away. Who likes to move to new places anyway? It was rather refreshing after a while to have a big front and back yard, and not live so close to people that they are always looking over the fence at what you’re doing such as nosey neighbors often do. Once I went exploring in the back yard I found to my amazement a mother cat that had been trying to take care of two kittens all by herself underneath the house. I would often find the kittens playing under the watchful eye of their mother in the tall grasses I made my dad leave there when he mowed the lawn, just for them. When they were old enough however, I befriended the mother cat and took the kittens in to take care of on my own before winter came, for it would often get cold in the winter, too cold for kittens. They grew up at my house under loving care, a sister and a brother, while their mother eventually disappeared into the wild never to be heard from again. Perhaps she was killed by the many coyotes that lived out in the brush around our neighborhood.
One of the kittens, a girl, I took special interest in and we clicked like so many best friends do. We grew so close that she would often never be without me and follow me everywhere outside, bounding across the yard so that she could always be on the same side of the yard as me even into adulthood. I loved her so much that I wanted her to share the joys of motherhood and she obliged one day by giving birth to a litter of kittens under the desk in my room on the fourth of July. They were the best kittens I’ve ever seen because they were the softest I’d ever felt, soft as baby rabbits, and they would obey me as if they had been born already professionally trained to obey commands, coming whenever I called.
Just after the kittens eyes were beginning to open, however, the mother, Rommie, had disappeared just like her mother had done, leaving me the kittens to take care of by myself, to wipe when they needed to go to the bathroom and to feed. I did this every day on regular intervals and watched them grow and play on a little cloth blanket I had devised out of some old rags just for them as well as in some little boxes and toys I had made with tape and scissors. I chose for them their own song played by one of the best composers of the time, Enya, which I would play when it was playing time for them because they always seemed to be happiest then.
They grew to where they were using a tiny litter box made especially for them and eating food on their own but that is where things began to turn wrong. One began showing signs of sickness. Loss of appetite, growth and becoming skinnier every day were just a few of the symptoms. I slowly watched as it happened to one kitten and then the sickness slowly began to spread one at a time to the others. I did take them to the vet but the vet revealed that he didn’t know what was wrong, gave them medication to aid in digestion and sent it home with me.
The next day as the kitten that had shown the signs first lay skin and bones in my hand after crying out from its hiding spot sickly behind the chair, I cried, watching it seize up and eventually die. Only then did I set it down on the floor. All the other animals, the other cats and the dog came up to sniff it, saying goodbye in their own way, before we wrapped it up in a cloth and buried it in our back yard. The other kittens I’m sure went the same way, one dieing at the vets office after giving it to a friend who took it there. The other kittens were old enough to be given away, having grown larger than the first, so I don’t know the outcome of them, perhaps they survived. But I am sure that somewhere in heaven the family of kittens, Rommie, her mother and her brother are all playing happily.
Crystal Taylor