Saturday, June 26, 2004
It was a pretty day here today, but it was a crazy day.
My two garden-helpers, Neal and Bryan, were due at 10:00 a.m. I was excited by the possibility of getting a lot of garden work done. At approximately nine o'clock, I opened the big garage door so the boys could come in.
When I opened the kitchen door a few minutes before ten o'clock, and started to go down the steps into the garage - headed for the outdoors, I noticed the garden door into the garage and its storm door were wide open. Though I remembered locking up tight the night before, and feeling confused, I thought: "Did I leave that open last night?!!" Then I saw Bryan standing over near the workbench grinning up to me on the landing.
He said when he came into the garage a bird was there and it flew into the window then fluttered down somewhere, so he was trying to find it. It really bothered him that it happened. All day, about every thirty minutes he was in the garage looking for that bird (We never found it; I think it flew away when he wasn't there to see it.), so at the end of the day, he wouldn't let me pay him for his full time here, because he spent so much time looking for the bird... and the kitten.
About two or three hours later, he came laughing and said, "Mrs. Crocker, come here and look. This must be Omaha's-Wild-Kingdom-day!" He had been weeding the border across the front of the house. He said he kept hearing a kitten: first over near the street where Neal's truck was parked, then closer under the cotoneasters across the side of the yard, and later up under the shrubs where he was working; then a kitten, the color of shadows, came out and surprised him. He said; he'd tried several times to catch it, but it always slipped out of his hands and went back under the shrubs.
All three of us (Neal, Bryan, and I) watched the mystery kitten, but no one wanted it and we were baffled, because we didn't know where it came from. None of the neighbors had a new kitten that I knew of. It acted friendly, but wouldn't let us catch it, and it kept crying all the time. Bryan is so soft hearted he couldn't stand that there was this skinny, wild-looking kitten that cried and must be hungry. He tried and tried to catch it even though he doesn't like cats.
I decided to lure it with food, and then if we could catch it, I'd take the kitten to the Animal Shelter - if they were open on Saturday. Bryan didn't want the kitten, but said if the Shelter was not open, he would take it to someone he knew who works there - if he could grab it. He thought that person would keep it until the shelter opened. I brought food and water, but it didn't take any even though it did finally smell a little sniff. The boys were very distracted by that kitten. It kept hanging around where they were working - crying, but out of reach.
I finally realized, and said: the kitten sounded as if it were crying for its mother and brothers and sisters. That must have struck a cord with Neal for the next thing I knew, he was walking back from his truck with some photographs in his hand and said, "Do you think that cat looks like this one?" - pointing to one of a litter of kittens in the snapshot. The one in the snapshot was younger and we tried to see if this one looked like that one, but older. We decided it did look very much like it.
Now, Neal lives off in another county about 20-25 miles from here somewhere in the country on his grandfather's farm. A farm cat had kittens on his grandfather Pap-paw's porch. The kittens hang around Pap-paw's house under the shrubbery. Neal and his parents live next door. Neal drives a pickup truck.
This kitten kept hanging around close to this house behind this shrubbery. It seemed to know Neal, because when Neal got down on his stomach, the kitten came almost to him and he grabbed it. It scratched him, one spot enough to bleed, but he held on to it. (I told him I'd heard of something called cat-scratch-fever and made sure he washed very well.)
We decided it was the kitten from the farm which had some way hitchhiked all the way here in or under his truck - OR - a look alike. Neal was nonplused because the kitten was so very young to be hitch-hiking on pickup trucks. I told him, either way, that kitten was going home with him. I had a basket and box top ready for transporting it. He put the basket containing the kitten in the garage out of the sun, and, I made sure the air holes weren't covered. It got quiet and I guess went to sleep, it'd had a bad day.
Neal did take the kitten home with him in the cab of the truck. I told him to let me know if it was their kitten or not. He said if it wasn't, he'd keep it there on the farm, anyway. I didn't know the rest of the story for a while.
Later, I checked my e-mail to see if there was a message from Neal with the rest of the story - there was:
From: "Neal"
To: "Mrs. Crocker" bees.garden@yahoo.com
Subject: Yep
"It was the one. It came out of the basket and went on like nothing had happened. Talk to you later.
Neal"
I guess miracles still happen and, wonder how many of its nine lives were used up today! That was one lucky kitten!
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