It’s about time for the three kittens that have been calling our yard home, to be moved on to their adoptive home. More than a year ago, a farm family placed an order for two kittens that liked to be held. When Midnight, the stray cat that calls our neighborhood home, had three kittens last March, we began a process to tame the kittens and teach them to enjoy socializing with people.
It seems to have worked, perhaps too well. When I went home for lunch Monday noon, the kitten we call Two Tone, came down out of a tree, ran to me, looked up and began to cry. When I didn’t reach down to pick her up, she started to climb my plant leg. She for sure got my attention.
Saturday evening, when I sat on a garden bench, Two Tone and Fuzz Ball both jumped into my lap and Blacky laid at my feet.
Sunday afternoon, when I tried to go for a bicycle ride, the cats were attacking the bicycle. I was afraid I would run over one of them. Rita came to my aid and with their attention focused on her, I was able to pedal away.
They remind me of a cat we had for years on Blauvelt’s Hill. The cat was a regular inhabitant of the station office. She liked to lay on the charge account file and watch the action from that perch. She refused to move when we needed a customer’s account book in which to record a sale.
She also like to walk across the cash register keys and enter strange transactions.
If we were in the house, she liked to sit on an outside window sill and watch the activity inside.
When we weren’t looking, she would sneak into the house. If the screen door wasn’t latched, she knew how to grasp the wooden door with her claws, pull it open and gain admission to the kitchen. That frequently happened on wash day when my mother was carrying clothes from the basement washing machine to the backyard clothes line. If there was any food on the counter or table, the cat had to sample and leave a whisker stamp. We were never sure when we found a whisker in the cooling cream or butter, if the whisker meant the sampled goods were approved or rejected products.
Both the dog and cat were overjoyed to see me leave the house with a B-B gun for it usually meant I was going sparrow hunting. The cat always got the first sparrow. She would see it falling and dash in snatch it away before the dog got it.
Rita and I will miss the kittens but as farm cats rather than town cats, they will have a better life. They will have plenty of space to call their own and critters to catch. When their new caretakers came to meet the family of three for the first time and select two, they acknowledged caring for three would be a lot more costly but they didn’t want to break up the family. They decided to take all three.
The kittens’ mother was super protective when the kittens were young but it is obvious she is now eager for them to be on their own. She wants to go back to being queen of the block, get all of the attention and first choice at the food bowl.
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