More Kittens

Wyatt and I were playing outside on the swing set yesterday when we heard a truck stop at the end of the small country road next to our house. A minute or so later, a kitten started to scream. Yep--someone else threw out an animal by our house. We just went through this a month ago with a black lab puppy. It's like these people think it's ok to dump a living, breathing creation on my doorstep. I have zero tolerance for people who throw out animals--find them a new home, kill them yourself, but don't leave them to starve to death or get run over while searching for food.

Wyatt knows the sound of a crying baby, and he immediately scrunched up his face to cry like I was hurting a baby somehow: "Mommy? Mommy?" So, I trudged gracelessly in my garden shoes across the freshly plowed, dusty field towards the woods between us and the road--I looked, I called, I got a deep briar scratch on my leg, but no cat. Of course, when I went back to the house, it started crying again. "Where the kitten, mommy? Kitten sad." Ten minutes later, it stopped crying and we left it at that.

Tonight, our entire family went out to dinner at a cheap little Mexican restaurant where Emerson's fussiness (literally, every second there wasn't food in his mouth) couldn't be heard over the 80s music blaring overhead. Amelia was a happy camper. Wyatt ate his weight in chips, cheese, and salsa as well as an entire bowl of tomatoes after he'd packed them on Henry truck and driven them across the table. It was a relatively good time with the kids.

When we returned home to the bath time routine, I heard the kitten again, only this time, it was from under my house. Jonah heard it, too. Imagine my surprise when TWO kittens squeaked their way to my food dish and let me pet their shivering forms. I let Wyatt come sit in my lap after his bath, and he was enthralled. "I hold out my hand," he says, but the kittens shy away. Then, he saw Jonah hiss at the boy kitten: "Go away Jonah!" he yelled. "Jonah eat them." No, Jonah is a big sissy and will be playing with them before long.

I have a love-hate relationship with kittens. I love kittens that belong to someone else. I hate kittens that ruin my plants and poo on my back steps. Now I have to find homes for these two. Good luck to me.