A Small Salvation

I arrived home late one Tuesday afternoon and my husband told me something needed rescuing. “In the garage around the corner. I think a cat’s got its collar caught on something.” We pass the garage when we walk the dogs. “If you have time to find it tomorrow, just let it go.”

No need to ask why me. It’s in my job description. “It’s a kitten,” I said. “I heard it before I left yesterday morning.” I had been away overnight.

“Don’t come home with it,” he said. If he had been wearing boots, he would have been shivering in them. We live with five cats and three dogs, none of which we have because either of us in a moment of madness said, ‘Pet! What a good idea.’ “Take it straight to the pound. Just rescue it; don’t save it.”

Easy for him to say. I’m the rescuer, and I have to deal with the consequences. Finders, weepers; law of the ‘hood.

It was a kitten, solemn green eyes, upturned nose, fuzzy black fur. Hungry. A talker who thought I was scarily fascinating. We made introduction Wednesday morning, but the kitten was demanding and illusive, which might be why it was still alive alone.

By Wednesday night it had moved across the street into the Freeman’s irises. Gena Freeman waved at me as she left on errands on Thursday morning. When she returned, she asked me if I needed help. We really aren’t on a neighborly name basis, and I guess she wondered why I had chosen to spend the morning sitting in her flower bed. I admitted to what I was doing and asked if she wanted this kitten, even though when I had tried to give the last one to her husband he almost snarled when he turned me down, so I already knew the answer. I won’t tell you about their dog and the stray kittens, two litters born at their house, and they don’t have a cat. Gena did say the dog was at the vet, and I could go in her back yard if I needed to, which was friendly of her, but it might have been because I wouldn’t be visible behind the fence.

I don’t know how long I sat among the fall debris while the ants swarmed the nibbles almost as soon as I put them down. I wondered if I was going to entice this tiny kitten to its death by ant bite. My husband is fond of repeating, ‘No good deed will go unpunished.’ I guess that is why he sends me to do good. I wondered if people with day jobs would even bother. But I had declared myself retired, and could waste time any way I wanted.

And I suspected a waste of time it was because this was the fifth lost kitten of the season, a very testy season. I have long known folks who liked animals had their full comportment, whether that happened to be one or eight; the folks with twenty-three were purely crazy and best avoided. Come to think of it, that might apply to folks with eight….look at me hunkered down in my neighbor’s plants. I also knew folks who didn’t like animals shouldn’t have them. That our neighborhood’s cat population had recently exploded, and this was likely not the end of the abandoned kitty season. That the Humane Shelter did its best, but was often overrun and if I took the kitten there, the only thing I might be saving it from was starvation. I also knew my limitations, and if there were nothing else available, this kitten would have to go to the pound. Really. It would.

But there I was, and there it was, looking at me with those huge green eyes, and nibbling out of my hand, alert enough to jump if I shifted. It would run back behind the azalea stems while begging me to be its momma, then come out to wrestle an iris leaf, climbing almost to the top before it tumbled down in surprise, it was that tiny and light. Under its fuzzy black coat it gleamed brown in the sun.

Chocolat, I thought. I made the mistake of giving it a name because, in spite of all I knew and all the kittens who can’t be rescued, here it was, and here I was, and God would just have to take over. I swooped my hand down and came up with kitten. Now it was God’s turn.

“Cute,” said Stephanie at the vet’s. “Wish we could keep her.” She pushed the chewed-ear cat off the desk. It was their fourth office kitty. No telling how many barn cats they had. All former strays. Stephanie wormed the kitten, defleaed her, and clipped her nails, all for free. “She’s seven weeks old, and a she.” Stephanie would also furnish stomach medicine after the kitten got the new-home diarrhea. And she promised to help look for a place for it, right after the three kittens someone called about yesterday. A woman was coming in the door as I left. “I have this kitten in car…” I heard before the door shut. No telling how many office cats the vet would have tomorrow, but Chocolat wouldn't be one of them. I didn’t have the essential pushiness…it’s why I never got caught up in parties selling cosmetics and plasticware at home, which might have helped me bypass the rescue business all together.

Miss Fran denied ever telling me when I found the next kitten, she would have to buy a baby gate to keep her little Shitzsu out of the litter box.

Kathy told me she thought the Freemans were responsible, or the Walkers who owned the garage where it was originally heard. Kathy has one twenty-three year old cat, and an orange tabby, a cantankerous aging rescue himself. She feeds them outside, and her oldest cat has to have Fancy Feast, which means so do the possums, coons, the pound puppy on the east, and at least three of my bunch. She is aware of the Kitty Rules of the Wild, rules I am sure the Freemans and Walkers wouldn’t abide by even if they happened to know them. What Kathy really wants is the miniature sherbet poodle she often baby sits.

Diane loves chocolate and kittens, and Chocolat and I spent an afternoon in the country, waiting to see if a match could be made. But her fat cat wasn’t interested in a kitten, and her husband even less so. Diane has been ill, and Ray felt one more thing, even a tiny kitten, might be the one must-do too many. Diane said when her cat was no more, they would get two kittens to grow up together and keep each other company.

Saturday I drove a friend to the airport. Of course we talked about the kitten dilemma. “I could take it the pound,” I said. I had already had this discussion with my husband. “I know the director. She would make sure my kitty had a home, but some other kitty that would have been adopted might have to die. I wouldn’t really have saved anybody from anything.”

“Take it and leave and don’t look back,” my friend said. She didn’t like cats anyway. “Think the best will happen.”

I looked at her. Within four years of each other, both my parents died from lingering, devastating illnesses. I was their primary caregiver. Somehow I reckoned if I were going to believe in God, I wanted One Who helped me to look the hardness of this life in the face—there’s more to truth than pretty. “There are no good answers,” I said, quoting my husband. “I guess I would rather know that up front.”

While I was gone, Chocolat was confined to my bathroom. My husband was prudently keeping his molecules separate from the kitty’s molecute ones. That, and the dogs thought it was a new squeaky toy. He could afford to be prudent. He had me. What I had when I returned was a bathroom tracked with kitty litter and the new-home diarrhea. Did you know kittens are messier than cats? Ach. I didn’t mean to tell you that, not with the fertile season still upon us. They outgrow it really soon. They do.

Sunday. This kitten didn’t need to live in a bathroom. Every day was a day its brain was being hard-wired. It needed a person to bond with. Every day it was getting bigger, already no longer the air and feather creature who could climb an iris leaf.

I had turned this kitten over to God, a quick, brief venture into openness because I had been much too busy for an extended session of meditation and prayer. But if I didn’t make some effort on this kitty’s behalf, it was going to soon be at the pound, God’s plan or no.

I could have made my step-daughter adopt it. She’s got a big heart and only two cats, but that's a chancy path to follow. Our three dogs were originally hers. You have to think about those things.

Sunday. Jesus said when your ox was in the ditch, pull it out. The kitten was in the bathroom. I did the only thing I could think of. I put it in a box and started down the street. I met up with Miss Fran and her Shitzsu, Pooky, out for a walk.

“I guess if I were a nice person, I would take it,” she said.

“If you took it and didn’t want it, you would be too cranky to be a nice person,” I said.

Miss Fran made the rounds with me, standing in the road while I knocked on doors, feeling like a kid delivering a Halloween trick. People, interested and friendly and generous to a grown woman standing on their steps with a box of kitten, didn’t want kitty litter, didn’t want more cats, didn’t want cats, didn’t want this cat, wanted this cat but couldn’t have it, had toddlers, had killer dogs, weren’t idiots. “But if you find a Russian blue,” said the woman who feeds all the cats—outside—in her part of the neighborhood. “But if you find a puppy…,” said the man whose ancient Lab had recently died. They passed me from house to house, with a smile and a touch on the shoulder, to someone down the street or around the corner who might take a cat. Miss Fran and Pooky got tired and went home. I was almost out of houses, and the ox was still in the ditch. I was tired myself, and grim, but I had begun the course, and I would stay it. I wouldn’t push this cat on people who didn’t want it. I wouldn’t give it to the woman with the two-year-old. I would knock on the next door, and the next, and then go home, giving God enough time to show me what I needed to learn, even if it was to let go, even if it was the pound.

I decided I would check with Mary Jane, though she had bad arthritis, because she had just one cat, and her's was the last house before I was caught between my step-daughter and the pound. She came to the door, looked in the box. She called to Keith. They looked at each other. “Shop kitty,” they said. They grinned. They would come for the kitten after they went downtown and got a carrier. They would keep this kitten to live in their store and kill mice.

“It’s too little to be a shop kitty,” my husband said. He was holding Chocolat, petting her up before her lonely shop life began, now that she wouldn’t be around to permanently bond with him.

“She’ll be all alone,” Miss Fran said when I called her to tell her the news. “She’s too little to be alone.”

Fine help they were. Was this God’s answer? Making do?

Mary Jane knocked on the door. She’d come for Scarlett. She was still grinning. “Green eyes, black hair,” she said. And a pointed face. They didn’t just have any name for her; they had the perfect name. They had fixed up a little room for her until she got big enough to be out on her own. They were at the store seven days a week. They were going to the pound and get her a kitty for company.

“Scarlett will have a long, happy life,” Fran said.

Once I had a cat with an inoperable goiter which would eventually strangle her. I was dallying with visualization at the time, but wasn’t sure what to visualize. I ‘saw’ my kitty five years in the future, healthy. Her goiter vanished. The vet couldn’t explain it. I had started feeding the cats tuna just about then; maybe there were healing properties in tuna, maybe the iodine of the ocean. Or maybe it was something else, something less explainable. But my cat got well when the vet thought she was terminal. Six months later, just about the time the goiter would have killed her, she disappeared.

I don’t know if Scarlett will have a long and happy life. I don’t know if God, with a lot of trudging on my part, provided her with just the right people. What seems to be miracles to me often look like minute shifts in the world of form, if you want to be objective. Who can tell?

This I do know, thinking of Chocolat, and the people who helped us, the people who listened and advised, all the people who had enough, too much, who wanted more, who wanted different, all the sunny days and dark nights of people, living and trying and failing and reaching out to extend a hand--maybe we can’t always be rescued. But here I am and here you are, and if we are steady enough, sturdy enough, we may well discover we’ve always been saved.