The Orphans Trail
I woke up this morning with a song stuck in my head – even though my radio was playing very different music. I know why.
It was an old anti-slavery spiritual called “Follow the Drinking Gourd” and it referred to the Big Dipper, how the North Star guided people to a safe haven. Those people were terrified. They didn’t know who to trust, and not everyone survived the journey. Somehow the secret instructions in the music helped them find their way.
My subconscious mind had been searching for the tune for several days, since five very frightened kittens came into Kitty City this past week. Their story is quite remarkable.
The couple who brought them in lives in a rural area that has changed drastically in the past decade, and now it’s probably one of the busiest traffic zones in town, near Afton Village. The house they’ve owned for many years has become surrounded by new neighbors, both families and businesses. Cats somehow know this house to be a safety zone, and they come from undeveloped woods across the fields through a storm drain beneath the road to eat at his garage. Some come regularly, some only occasionally, but there are quite a few feral cats that the family cares for.
The little mama cat had been coming daily for two years. As a wild kitten, she lounged in the warm sunlight just beyond his garage door and watched him work. At least once she had kittens, born on the other side of the busy road. Once in a while he might touch her briefly as she ate, but she was nobody’s pet. She lived her life on her terms, in the little patch of uninhabited woods over there.
He saw her belly growing rounder with babies, so he knew exactly when they were born. She didn’t come around for a few days and then scampered back to her nest as soon as she was full.
The kittens were six weeks old when she hobbled painfully out of the storm pipe and collapsed inside his garage. Her face was mauled and her leg was broken, and likely she had internal injuries from a coyote or other animal attack. Though he nursed her for a few days, it was obvious that her wounds were too severe. Finally he lifted her gently and carried her to be euthanized. The man and his wife worried about the fate of her litter.
Several days passed, and then two fluffy kittens emerged through the storm drain and studied him cautiously. They made their way to the garage, just as mother had done for two years, and munched some kibble. In a few days three more siblings joined them, and the wild babies permitted the man and his wife to pick them up and comfort them and tell them good things about their mother and how they looked like her.
The kittens are settled now in a cage at Kitty City. While they still are not entirely convinced that their lives have changed for the good, they hiss only a little and permit strangers to kiss their noses and brush seeds out of their baby fuzz. They seem to understand.
When he told me how far they had to travel and the story of how they chose the house that their mama cat favored over all others in the neighborhood, it made goose bumps on my arms. Surely the week of rain had washed away smells of her passage through the tunnel. Their tiny legs had brought them a great distance and their wild instincts should have told them to stay in the woods.
Do mother cats tell their children stories just as humans do? Did other cats, who generally are not hospitable to strange kittens, send them to safety? Could enough of her scent have survived the rain water and the passage of many other bodies through the woods and tunnel and front yard that it might lead all of her babies to refuge? It is truly a mystery.
And equally mysterious is why the dying wild mother dragged herself to her human friend who sustained her life to end her suffering.
Another song played in my head all day. From my childhood memories, I recalled Albert McNew’s lovely tenor voice singing in my hometown church as though it were last week. “His eye is on the sparrow, so I know He’s watching me.” If God watches out for five little stray kittens, among the multitudes of unwanted cats born this spring, surely He will take care of me too.
It does give you goose bumps, doesn’t it? ... Patsy
Warmie
