I hope you’ve been enjoying our discussions of animal love (and non-love) this week here at Doves & Serpents. Considering that our blog’s title names two animals, it’s a wonder we haven’t had these discussions earlier!
Gurgi was just a year old herself when she got knocked up. (She was my cat, not a human, and I probably should have started with that tidbit.) I had to come to grips with the fact that we were going to have a young mom in our house. And I hadn’t recognized the pregnancy until just a few weeks before the litter was born, so the surprise factor was high. A teenaged babysitter who knew her way around animals was the one who broke the news to me.
“She’s not just getting plump, she’s going to have kittens,” said the sitter politely, this bombshell dropped as we were getting ready to take her home. The children began to squeal and jump. Exultation all around! Kittens! In our house! Soon!
I just let out a defeated sigh. I already had three cats – an elderly Russian Blue named Lexei who had some incontinence problems, a crotchety tom named Knight who growled into his food bowl, plus Gurgi, the latest addition to the menagerie, a sweet tabby we’d named after a character from The Black Cauldron. I hadn’t realized Gurgi wasn’t spayed, and if I had, she would not have been enjoying so much outside time until the surgery had taken place.
It just so happened that about this time, my life was falling apart. This moment in time was the beginning of the ‘commence avalanche’ sequence – when pebbles start dropping and the ground starts rumbling, but before the cliff completely shears off the side of the mountain in a rushing torrent of snow, trees and momentum. Thus, I did not have sufficient energy to care for the critters already in my care, let alone baby versions. Preparing for the upcoming birth was yet another task to add to the everlasting “to do” list, and so on the way out the door, I scowled at poor Gurgi, even though the fault was mine.
In the next couple of weeks, I needed to get ready for the birth, but I was so consumed by my own heartbreak, I didn’t have the wherewithal to even watch a youtube clip on cats giving birth. Heartbreak can turn us into selfish creatures indeed, and thus had I become rather Grinch-like in my heart. My mother and sister happily received the news and told me, “Oh good! You’re going to have kitten energy in your house!” But I felt very little for these kittens, even though as I child I had adored all the kittens we’d coddled and snuggled over the years.
Nonetheless, Gurgi continued to prepare. On a windy Saturday in May 2010, she started meowing in a most unusual fashion, and she wanted to be both inside and out, or perhaps, more accurately, neither inside nor outside. She paced unevenly in front of the house door, then flopped to the ground. It was her panting that woke me up to what was happening. She was in labor! She was going to have the kittens! Today!
No surprise – my first thought was, ‘I’ve got to get to google!’ I typed in “My cat is having …” and the helpful search engine supplied the “kittens” as correct end to my sentence. Multiple links offered information, information I should have sought out much earlier, but there was no undoing that lack of preparation now. Instead, my daughter and I quickly found a box and a crocheted afghan blanket and created a private nook next to the utility room. Then, heeding the counsel of one of those links, we left Gurgi alone for a bit so that she could have some privacy.
When we peeked in fifteen minutes later, Gurgi was licking a small, wet, rodent-like ball of life that had somehow appeared in that box. Kitten #1 had been born. My daughter and I weren’t going to leave again, so we set up a little vigil (with the laptop open nearby). I had learned from another link that litters are typically between 3-5 kittens. I assumed that since Gurgi was so young, she would have a small litter, maybe even smaller than three. I must note that this assumption was not founded in any actual knowledge of animal husbandry. Kitten #2 arrived, then Kitten #3. Hmmm. Her belly was still distended, a few lumps and bumps moving in there.
“She’s having four kittens,” my daughter shouted happily.
But my happy daughter was wrong. Gurgi ended up having five kittens: two red boys, two tabby girls and a jet black girl. (We named them, respectively, Peaches, Gingersnap, Rascal, Lynx and Joan of Arc.) And Gurgi was a splendid mother to all five, starting immediately – she licked and groomed and nursed and carried and called them exactly as she was supposed to. That day, the kittens’ arrival day, was Mother’s Day Eve. And Gurgi had been reborn as a natural mother, no longer a kitten, but caregiver.
As the kittens began to take shape in the weeks and months that followed, morphing from tiny rodents to fuzzy felines, and then as they began to develop their limb skills, wobbling around the box, as they learned how to scale my daughter’s canopy, shredding the tulle in their chasing games, as they found their little mewing voices and yipped for their mother when they got lost, I did partake in that kitten energy.
And the partaking of that energy did help me. The mountain had crumbled, that couldn’t be stopped, but at night, when I was lying alone in the terror of my room, I now had five living, breathing, giving, loving animals who helped me to remember what it felt like – again – to be happy
Aww, this takes me back to when we adopted our current cat, Butterscotch. She was about 7 weeks old and so lively and fun. There is something magical about youth- in animals and humans.
I’m not an animal person, but it’s hard to resist tiny, new kittens who haven’t even opened their eyes yet. They are the sweetest things I have ever seen. Thank you for sharing your story!
Oh do I hear you in calling yourself a Grinch. It seems almost impossible to welcome new life when everything seems to be crumbling underneath you. It is certainly how I have felt in the past, but, as you said, when it comes down to those little lives, bringing energy, it helps things liven up, just a tiny bit.
It’s so entertaining to put babies in the middle of the room and just watch! As a kid, I loved the experience of seeing our cat give birth and being a part of watching the kittens grow and thrive. If only kittens stayed kittens!
We’ve had our two cats for thirteen years– since they were kittens. They were incorrigible as kittens (and still are sometimes) but having them around was the best thing possible for our kids at the time when they had to endure two big moves in two years. They gave the boys something to take care of through those moves, and a stable bit of companionship when all the other friends were far away.
And, speaking of surprises– my mom adopted a rescue cat about a year and a half ago. We chose a beautiful deep black neutered male, who seemed small for his reported age of about a year old. We named him Angus. About 6 months later, Angus was still very small, but the other cat my mom had, about the same age, had grown a lot. We took Angus into the vet for shots, and the vet took a look at his behind, and said, “What a pretty little girl.” We said that Angus was a he, and the vet very amusedly pointed out that she was a she. We’re not sure what the rescue center’s vet removed– but a neutered male, she is not. No kittens, so apparently she’s a spayed female. My mom’s 5 year old neighbor summed it up when we took her home, “She knew she was a girl all along. She just couldn’t tell us!”