Purrrfection

I swear I’m not bored, not in the least, I’m overworked ... but I’m suddenly aware of a feline soap opera in my neighborhood.

A couple weeks ago, we saw a small calico cat in our backyard with three kittens, obviously fairly newborn. They might have been born right there, possibly under my very nose, while I was trying to set up a three wire trellis for our Mourvèdre vine (yes, poor to mediocre wine coming soon!) or dealing with the loss of the third, littlest olive tree in a pot.

My friend (and former boss) Tim risked blood loss to gather up the feral cats in his neighborhood and bring them in to be fixed before releasing them. I’m an animal lover too. Well, frankly, that’s a silly phrase. Is there anyone out there who doesn’t love some animal? Yes, I know, there are the Michael Vicks, but that’s lack of education. No one smart, no one with any empathy can believe animals are any less than humans, especially the ones of the cat and dog varieties. Yes, I digress, but the point is I’m an animal lover too, and instead of making everyone miserable schlepping animals to the pound in a crate, I think of short-term rather than long-term solutions. I just feed them.

This is the microcosmic equivalent of feeding homeless people instead of teaching them a trade. It’s easy, and so I do it. Sorry. Part of my excuse was that I want to teach Mikey about being careful around strange animals while maintaining empathy. (That looks awfully good on paper, doesn’t it?) Here’s how the routine has been for the last couple of weeks:

We’ll be out in the backyard. Mikey will notice the mother cat, who is generally on the other side of the pool fence from us, yowling.

“Mama cat hungry!”

So we go inside and get water (or milk if Daddy is feeling especially generous) and cat food (apologizing to our own cat Floyd) and being very, very careful not to spill, and then more carefully that the cats who might be scared of us don’t scratch, we bring them out to the cat and her kittens. Now, her kittens are adorable. You could watch the three of them (one black, one black with white paws, and one calico like her/his mom) all day long run around our backyard, onto the furniture, playing with Mikey’s cars and pool toys, and wrestling around.

I don’t know if it was Ian or me who first looked at the adorable creatures at play and mused, “Where do you suppose they’re pissing and shitting?”

So there’s that. But they’re so cute, what does it matter?

This morning, the kittens’ charm was lost on Mikey for the first time. He saw them playing with his baseball in the back yard, and hammered on the glass door, “No, cats, that’s my ball!”

“You’ll scare them!” I warned.

“Okay,” Mikey replied, and hammered harder on the window.

Then, just now, I saw a new figure in the backyard. A long sleek black cat, who gave the kittens a obligatory pat on the head, and then proceeded to mount the mom.

The kitten daddy.

And my poor fixed fluffy Floyd cat just watches from the window and thinks, “The drama!”