Critter's Corner

Three Little Kittens Who’ve Lost Their Mittens…

We gazed through the large sliding glass door out onto the porch that held a cardboard box with an old towel and some blood inside of it. Atop the towel and beneath a young skinny feril cat, too young to date, lay three little black and white elf kittens meowing their hearts out for more milk.

The people who hired me to empty their home loved the idea of feeding and nurturing strays, but when it came time to taking them to the vet to be spayed or even bringing them inside, it was a chore they simply couldn’t muster.

Catching the mommy cat proved to be quite a challenge with the man of the house suffering lots of scratches and bruising of his thin skin. When the time finally came to load the felines into the truck, we were worried the kittens would be difficult to place so quickly as the babies were too young to wean.

Once home and locked securely in my daughter’s bathroom, where she could feed and pet the Mother and try to tame her for a future family. The mother convinced us through meowing into opening the window to the outside so that she could jump in and out and feed when she felt like it and not be chewed on all night. This went on for a few weeks, then one evening I worried she might not return and we began to feed the kittens milk from a can. Sure enough, the mother returned but not before we knew that the kittens would be fine to place.

We again ran an ad on Craigslist and found a fantastic woman who came and got them all for her farm and barn and a lifetime of mousing up in the foothills. How lovely is that? To think of the little kitties and their mommy all safe and sound in the country. What a life!

It was dark and cold at the Galt Market the morning I met little Silky Satin Velvet Misty. My daughter later shortened her name as I told her we didn’t have all day to call her puppy. I was working at the flea market around May 5th, 1999. She was as small as a teenie beanie baby and stuffed inside the breast pocket of the old man’s shirt.

I asked him if he had just bought the stuffed toy for a child he knew. He moaned that the small beige truffle was in fact a puppy, one of five his wife wanted him to find homes for by noon that day. The fact was, he hadn’t enough money to care for them all. I quickly jumped at the chance to adopt the four inch pup and offered the man fifty dollars so he could buy food for the others.

In hindsight, eight years later, I wish I had adopted them all, as Misty has become such a cherished family member and so many of our friends long for a doggy so good as she. I would have no trouble placing them all and the love and companionship she has given my little girl could never be replaced by another pup.

As one of our friends says, “She simply oozes personality,” and we all agree. Some dogs find you, rather than the other way around.

The Saga of “Govenor”

A year and a half ago, just after returning from a two week trip to the south of France, a realtor friend phoned me to clean out a land park home which was left vacant for quite a few months after the owner had passed. I quickly organized an estate sale and went to work straight away cleaning and organizing the contents of the home.

Upon my first visit inside, I came upon a mangy, fat, grey, and sickly cat by name of The Govenor. How did I know his name? He wore it on a brass tag on his tattered collar around his tangled neck. He had been left inside this dirty unkempt home for nearly four months with no assistance to speak of. He simply chewed through a bag of food left in the pantry, drank from the toilet, and made his way of a litter box wherever he chose.

As time went on and I worked away, I found out more pieces to the puzzle about the abandoned cat. It turned out that The Govenor was named after Ronald Reagan by a cabinet member and fire chief. He had been around longer than many of the neighbors and had suffered great abuse since the sickness and eventual death of his owner. It seemed that those in charge of the estate had young children and wanted little to do with a mangy sickly cat that was too fat to play with or train in his late age. He was left to his own devices and made his own way until the day we met in the summer heat.

Once my ten-year-old daughter caught wind of the situation she came to the house with me and begged to bring him home with many a promise of her caring for the cat. I gave in and we talked him into the four runner and brought him home for a long needed bath. To her credit, my little girl worked on his ragged coat, scabby ears, and dirty teeth for far too long until he smelled nearly acceptable.

He was a fixture in the household until we ran an ad on Craigslist looking for a home for him. It went something like this:

Rescue me!
Hi. I am a big fat grey cat who could care less about dogs and sort of likes babies, digs, older kids but mostly am smitten by old men and ladies who will let me sit by them, under them or on them. I need some lovin' man. That's what I'm talking about, la amoure baby. Some hugs, pets, kisses, and brushin. Gots ta have it! If you think you may be my 'soul mate' and that you have a place for me to retire to, get back at me and we'll meet and talk. Ciao bella. The Governor.

Well, that finally did it. The couple who came to rescue Governor could not have been more perfect if they had tried. No kids. No baggage. No dog. Just a nice kind home with lots of attention and love to give an old noble beast. What luck! Some stories do have a happy ending. This is just one of the many critters we have saved from the gas chambers.