A cat from outside adopted Bill. He named her Priscilla. A few weeks ago she had her kittens. We never saw them till night before last. I found this photo on the web, because it looks so much like our Priscilla, but of course her babies are tiny.
7:57 am, Thursday, April 9, 2009
Cupcake
I forgot that April is my favorite month. The name is so pretty, April. And it’s my birthday month. And here on desert April is all about the green leaves on trees. They get their leaves on April 1 and each morning is a new glorious sight, because desert is “Jack and the Beanstalk” land. A weed which is one inch tall in the morning, by next morning is 6 feet tall.
Our glorious sunshine makes everything grow so fast. A week ago the new green baby leaves were still so young and small and yellow, chartreuse with lots of yellow still in it. Now the world out my window is lush. The leaves are Kelly green and they are much bigger. They went from baby duckies to second graders, self-assured 7 year olds starting off for school. It’s a whole other world, a transformed world, than the view from my window all winter. Now it is the world of green leaves against the blue sky and it sure is pretty. And green leaves wherever you look. You are always looking into green leaves.
It hit me last week or maybe the week before, that Priscilla did not have her babies in some secret spot in our yard that Beanie (our dog) cannot get to, but instead she has them in the house. Bill turned that second living room, that huge huge room, into an art studio, and in the dark corner by the fireplace all the canvasses are stacked up. But because of the way they are stacked up, I realized last week there would be tunnel thru them. A tunnel big enough for a cat to get thru but not for my Beanie.
And I don’t know why it suddenly hit me that that is where she has her kitties. It seemed such an inaccessible spot, safe in the house, dark, inaccessible to Beanie, and would explain why she is always around. The instant Bill would take Beanie out, she would appear for her food and to say hi to me. And the instant Bill and Beanie were back and Beanie went under the bed for his nap, and Bill was alone in the kitchen making his breakfast, she would appear to hang out with her beloved Bill. And at night when Bill sat down to play chess with the computer and Beanie and I were safely in back room, she would spend all evening with Bill. “She loves chess” Bill would tell me.
The instant I told Bill “Priscilla had her kittens in our living room and not in some faraway inaccessible spot in the yard,” he denied it.
He said “NO! I don’t want her having her babies here! It is not safe from Beanie. I want her to have her kitties outside!”
He was so emphatic in his denial, “I don’t want the kittens in the house, they are not safe here, they are safe outside.”
I took it back, I said “I am sure she has her kittens outside.”
And the odd thing is that when Bill denied it when I told him, and I went along with his denial to please him, the odd thing is that my mind slipped into denial. I completely forgot that I had realized Priscilla has her kittens in that remote corner of Bill’s art studio where everything is stacked up and Beanie can’t get to it. I actually went back to thinking she has her kittens somewhere outside in the yard. And when we drove back from the pool, along our alleyway, I kept my eyes peeled at our easement, our yard, the yard across the way, wondering if I would get a glimpse of the kitties.
And then the night before last while I was reading in my bed and Beanie was stretched out on his featherbed next to me, I heard Bill call out from the second living room/art studio in an urgent voice. “Anne! come here! what is this! Don’t bring Beanie!”
The way he called out “What is this!” I assumed that Beanie had brought in the stale fried chicken I had thrown out in the yard, left it in the middle of the carpet, and I was going to be yelled at about it. That he would say “That is not how you feed Beanie, you break up the food very nicely, take out the bones so they won’t hurt him, and put it in a nice bowl for him.” And then he would say “Why isn’t Beanie eating his food? Does he have stomachache? What did you feed him!” That is the usual kind of emergency for which I am summoned in that urgent voice, “Anne come here! what is this?”
I just didn’t understand why he said “keep Beanie away!” But it wasn’t about the old fried chicken lying on the carpet. Bill had something small and black in his hand and it was meowing lustily, it was incessantly meowing, calling for its mother.
“It’s Priscilla’s kitten” we both said.
“How did it get in here?” Bill said.
It was meowing so hard I said to Bill “Put it back!”
“Back where?” he said. I forgot Bill had denied the kittens were born and being cared for in some spot under all his canvases, where it makes an archway tunnel.
“It must have walked in from outside” Bill said.
“O yes right” I said keeping up the fiction.
Fortunately wherever Beanie was, he did not come. Bill had that black cupcake in his hand, meowing its head off, and didn’t know what to do with it. And neither did I. And the next thing we knew I saw Priscilla trotting in from somewhere way in the backyard. She wasn’t racing but it was determined-face trot. The instant I saw her I went right to my back bedroom to make sure Beanie was there, he will stay where I am.
And Bill reported to me a few minutes later that Priscilla instantly took the kitten by back of neck and moved it to where she wanted. Of course Bill thinks she took the kitten back outside to its nest. Altho he said “I didn’t see her go out with it.” He was just so happy and pleased and relieved that Priscilla arrived so fast to rescue both Bill and her kitten, as neither were happy in that situation. The kitty wasn’t scared in Bill’s hand, but she sure was crying her head off for her mother. And Bill was absolutely flummoxed. “What should I do with it?” he kept asking me.
It took both of us two hours to calm down afterwards. If it weren’t for Beanie this business of the kittens would all be sheer delight for everyone. But we just don’t know if the kitties are safe with Beanie. That is why Bill wanted to believe so badly Priscilla has the kittens in an alcove in the yard which Beanie can’t get to, and is why Bill still believes that. He has not changed his story, he actually thinks that kitten found its own way into the house looking for its mother. Bill said “I heard it crying the whole time I was playing chess, but I thought I was imagining it, and then finally I went in to look, and there it was.” “She took the kitten away in her mouth” he said.
But I remembered when I used to have a cat which had kittens in my apartment in the Lower East Side. I had made spot for her to have her kittens in the closet, but she wanted bottom drawer of dresser. And each time I put the kittens back in the box in the closet, she took each one by the neck and moved it back to the drawer. After this happened 3 times I gave up and let her have drawer for her kittens, so I knew Priscilla had taken her kitten by the neck.
And the next morning, yesterday morning, when we were all calm and happy again, Bill said that’s what Priscilla did, she took the kitten by the back of the neck.
“You said it was black?” I asked.
“Not exactly black, but very dark charcoal.” He said how the kitten wasn’t really scared in his hand, just bewildered. “She trusted me” he said, “she knew I was safe.”
And we both realized Priscilla only did determined trot, and did not fly across the living room, when she saw that Bill had her kitten, because she knew the kitten was safe with Bill. “Priscilla came in and rescued me” Bill said, “she knew I didn’t know what to do with the kitten, she solved everything.”
And we both realized that is why we have not seen Priscilla around so much for past two days. As long as all her kittens did was sleep and nurse, she was free to hang out with Bill as much as she wanted when she wasn’t actually nursing. But as Bill pointed out, now that the kittens have gotten rambunctious she has much more work to do. And it is true. Before, as long as Priscilla felt Beanie was not around, she could be hanging out with Bill or me or her house, occasionally she took recreation in the yard, I would see her thru open window in the sunshine. But the evening Bill found the kitten was after a day we had not seen Priscilla at all. Just for one minute in yard, while Bill was out in front yard with Beanie.
I wonder what Priscilla does do all the time now. I guess she has to hang with her kitties. She lets them crawl around in whatever space they are, but when they go too far, out into middle of big living room, she has to bring them back. Unless of course, after that episode, she did change their spot. It’s always possible she did bring them to some safe secluded spot in the yard, we will never know. That small black meowing thing in the palm of Bill’s hand is the only real evidence we have of the kittens. Everything else is deduction. She used to be so fat, now she has her figure back. She used to spend all her time on top of the refrigerator surveying everything, now she only comes at designated times.
When we got calm and relaxed and secure about the kittens yesterday, got confidence that Priscilla would manage everything perfectly and we didn’t have to worry, that she knows Beanie and would know how to keep kitties away from him, Bill said “you know, if we adopt that little kitten I will name him ‘Cupcake’ because it was exactly like having a chocolate cupcake in my hand.”
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