Tales from the Shark Tank

I gave up on Sophia and fed the kittens last night and again this morning, crying over the loss of their mother myself.  Then an hour after this morning’s bottle, there she was at the door.  My usually quiet cat, who mews politely for admission, was absolutely yowling at the door.  Jospeh let her in and she ran for the place she’d left her kittens like a rocket, and I ran with equal urgency for the attic, whence I had moved the kittens for warmth.  So the feline family is reunited, and for the moment all is well.  And I am going back to sleep!

I thought all was going swimmingly here. Sophia would go out now and again, with increasing frequency, but she would come back in at most an hour an a half – and that time was on a night when we had coyotes in the front yard.

Today we have a problem. She went out about 11:00 this morning, and hasn’t come back yet – at 6:00 p.m. I went out to call her, shaking her food container and searching the barn, techniques that have worked in the past to bring her home. No luck. No sign of a small grey cat. She’d vanished for 24 hours before, but she didn’t have nursing kittens then. Now, well, I’m not sure what to think.

But the kittens were shivering visibly when I checked on them, so I currently have a pair of 9 day old kittens sleeping tucked into my sweatshirt. They were trying to nurse for awhile, but my attempts to feed with the dropper I have were in vain. My wonderful husband has gone to get a kitten-bottle (I have formula) and I’ll feed them when he gets home. I’m very much afraid something’s happened to her, but for whatever reason she’s missing, I’m taking it that they are effectively motherless. I was afraid of that happening, given that she put them in our son’s room, he could not manage to leave them in peace, and she’s been quite the nervous mother from the beginning.

So I’m about to try my hand at hand-raising kittens after all. HELP!

Update: Ok, I may have jumped the gun. I called the emergency vet center and was told that at this age, a queen can leave her kittens for as much as 12 hours with no harm done. So I’ll look for her back at her usual (pre-kitten) hour. And the kittens certainly weren’t hurt by an hour’s cuddle in a sweatshirt worn by a warm human-mommy.

And I got to see their eyes open a little. Not much, and not for long, but those were definitely open eyes.

I love the things I hear in passing, often single lines with no context to them.

At the gym: “I’ve sprayed enough WD-40 on that thing that it probably qualifies for OPEC membership!”

And from one end of an overheard phone conversation:  “You should have known you were in trouble when they put “obey” in your wedding vow and left it out of hers.”

The Sophia-cat has herself contorted into a position even a human with a slinky-like spine would have difficulty attaining in the middle of the living room.  She’s taking advantage of a brief respite from her offspring’s continual nursing.  The kittens are growing so quickly that I can see a perceptible difference in their size between morning and evening on the same day.

And like all young mammals, they grow in their sleep.  The end result is that they sleep pretty much all the time.  I can see where this would be a survival characteristic; sleeping kittens are silent kittens, and they are certainly defenseless at this stage.  Their eyes are closed, their claws soft and their teeth as yet absent.  They are tiny balls of digesting, growing fluff.

I’m taking advantage of that to get them accustomed to my scent.  Sophia won’t let the big noisy kitten touch them, but if I reach a hand down to stroke, she just purrs.  Of course it probably doesn’t hurt that I pet her first, nor that the kittens make no protest when I touch them or put a finger where they can sniff and lick at it.  I do these things while the boychick is at school, so that he doesn’t see mom permitted liberties that Sophia denies him.

She should be bringing them out pretty soon; if I don’t miss my guess their eyes should open next week sometime, and at that point they’ll start to stagger about and explore a bit.  But meanwhile, they’re doing their newborn kitten thing.  When they aren’t eating, they sleep – and they grow.

From the time our son was three and came into the special education system, his official annual I.E.P. (Individual Educational Plan) conference has been around his birthday, in October.  Each year, anticipating a need to plan for the following academic year before it began rather than nine weeks into it, I have requested a spring conference.  Each time, I’ve had to argue for it, because “his conference is in October and he’s doing fine.”  Yes, he was, but everyone needed to stay on the same page if he was to continue to do “fine”, and that required sitting down and figuring out what might need to change with the new grade.  “He’s working at grade level” I’d be told “so there’s no need to do anything”.  Grade level was “good enough”, and never mind what the child’s actual capabilities might be.  I anticipated the same exchange and arguments here, and in fact intended to put in my request for a conference as soon as I returned from the next Indianapolis expedition.

So you may imagine my surprise and delight when the special education teacher, who is the person in charge of coordinating all the services and assistance our son receives, called me up and said chirpily that our boychick was doing well, but that she wanted to schedule a spring conference to set out how we would be starting him off in third grade, and what might need to change in response to the changing academic requirements.  “He’s far ahead of grade level” she told me “and we want to keep him interested and involved”.  He’s been recommended for a week-long science day camp, and for the local gifted and talented program, both on the basis of his actual work rather than on standardized tests that he has difficulty with because they are entirely verbal with no contextual clues.  The contrast between the attitude of the school system in Indy – which is supposed to be a good one – and this school system could not be greater.  And I could not be happier.

It’s finally done. I have purchased and paid for a small lawn tractor type riding mower, which will be delivered to our abode later this afternoon. It’s none too soon, given the height the grass has attained. It would be worse had the spring brought a typical amount of rain, but for the most part it’s been bright, clear, and unseasonably warm.

We’ve never needed a riding mower before, but then we’ve never had an acre to mow, either. Moreover, my husband has done the mowing in past years. Now his working hours are such that it would be better if I could do it, and I am not mowing an acre with an ancient push mower. It’s just not gonna happen. I’m not even sure the aforesaid ancient push mower still works, as I don’t think it got fuel stabilizer in it last fall. I know I didn’t think of it, and I doubt my husband did either.

That we have this new-to-us riding mower is the result of networking. Our son’s best friend’s uncle owns a lawn and garden store, so our friends asked him to keep an eye out for a used riding mower in good condition. And indeed he found us one. New, it would cost more than I spent on my minivan, but this way we’re good. He not only located it, he cleaned and adjusted it and sharpened its blades. Once it gets here, I’ll be able to either put it in its shed (if it’s too late to mow) or take right off and attend to the lawn. I’ll enjoy that. I may never enjoy mowing again, but this time, with a new toy to play with, I shall.

There’s a blog I read periodically written by a delightful, insightful middle-aged woman about the reality of growing older in this society. Off on her side-bar, she has a group of links for what she refers to as “Honorary Elder-bloggers: not yet 50.” In terms measured by trips around the sun, at age 47, I might fit that classification. At the very least, its existance on her side-bar made me think about where I am.

I can’t deny I’m getting older. My body is slowing down whether I like it or not (I don’t). I don’t shrug off heavy work so quickly. I have a different perspective than I did when I got out of law school, something over 20 years ago. I am far less easily surprised than I was then, and to the extent that I ever worried much about appearances, I worry about it even less now. Other people are noticing too, and not in any way I like; the last time I had to look for a job I wasn’t even getting interviewed. I would be very surprised if age wasn’t a factor. I joke about being middle-aged, but the fact is that I’m getting there and I really don’t mind anything but the physical changes.

And yet in a lot of ways I do not fit that description. I may well be old enough to be mother to the parents of my son’s classmates, but the fact remains that I have a child in second grade. I am probably closer to the end than the beginning of my career, but my concerns are those of the mother of an elementary school child. I have been invited to a retreat in Southern Indiana in June, and my first consideration as to whether I will be able to attend is whether I will have a babysitter.

And in some ways I blend the two viewpoints, those of the mother of a young child and those of one becoming middle-aged in body. One of the things I have to consider when I think about that retreat is whether I will have the physical energy to take care of my son the following week. I used to consider driving 5 hours one way suitable for a day-trip. I’d leave in the morning, go to whatever gathering or event I wanted to attend, drive back and get home at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, and be fine the next day. That time is so long past that remembering it is more like reading about something someone else did than thinking about something I once did. I have a lot of reasons for working so hard to lose the excess weight I put on over the course of about 4 years. Some of them are that I am not resigned to the time bombs lurking in my genetic heritage, and that many of them are triggered by obesity, but among the others is a simple desire to regain some of the abundant energy I had. The logic is simple. It takes energy to haul around the equivalent of an Army backpack, especially if you can’t take it off at the end of the day. But the resolution is much easier than the doing now, as the gaining was easier than once it was. That too is the gift of an aging body; in my early and mid twenties I had trouble keeping my weight up, rather than down.

I’m certainly not alone in being where I am. With no effort at all, I can think of four other women in my close circle who are about my age with children the age of mine. We mothers range in age from 45 to 49, our kids from 7 to 9. We all kvetch about the things our bodies are doing to us, all refuse to let it stop us, though it does slow us down whether we will or no. We all get well and truly irritated when someone compliments us on our “grandchildren”. We’re thin on the ground still, but no longer unheard of.

So here I am, perched squarely on the fence. I’m not particularly an elder blogger, honorary or otherwise, not even really approaching it. My life revolves around things at least some of them are past. But some of my concerns are identical, and the perspective that comes simply from watching the world go by and thinking about it remarkably similar. So I’m reading Ronni Bennett’s blog, and hanging out, as I always have, without regard for the ages of my friends. I remember what I was doing when Kennedy was assassinated. Many of my friends hadn’t been born when that happened. Others can tell me stories of going to school the day Pearl Harbor was bombed. For the most part, age is irrelevant to all of us. I can’t help but think that’s the way it should be.

I left my husband, son, and the cat family alone for the weekend with some trepidation, but it apparently went well…until this morning.  This morning I left my son alone for under two minutes while I went to make his lunch, and mama cat came into the kitchen for a drink.  The kittens were asleep and doing fine, we thought.  Then we heard kitten-screams from the living room.  Two mamas raced in to find a guilty small boy holding a kitten in each hand, tightly gripped around their bellies.  “Don’t look!” he told me.  I told him to put them down NOW, that he was hurting and scaring them, and that Sophia was very angry and so was I.  “Maybe you should put them where I can’t reach them!” was his response.  Mine was “Maybe you need to remember what you were told.  If you scare the kittens, Sophia will hide them.”

Now she has.  While a neighbor was tilling up my garden for me, she moved them.  I came in and looked, and lo, they were gone from the space behind my recliner.  Now, she didn’t make the best possible choice.  She hid them in the far corner of the same little boy’s room, under the head of his bed.  (Today would be the day I forgot to close his bedroom door!)  I’m trying to figure out a better place for the family on the one hand, and afraid to mess with them on the other hand for fear she’ll abandon them altogether.  But I can hardly send his boyness to his room for messing with the kittens when they are living in his room!

I have an hour and a half to figure something out before he comes home from school.

A friend of mine whose life is bounded by the obligations of caregiving has been known to comment that simple technologies often provide the greatest sanity preservers. I spent this weekend in Indy, cleaning my parent’s house so that it will be safe for them. This is a large project, and while necessary, I cannot characterize it as fun. And my latest small technological indulgence did indeed help to keep me sane.

I’d looked at MP3 players off and on for several years, but never indulged. Now that I have, I rather wish I’d done it some time ago. I loaded it with folk and Celtic music, and rather puzzled my mother by giggling at intervals over lines in the various songs. (My favorite of the day was “We’re foremost at a party/ and hindmost in a fight/ And if you say you’re stronger/ We’ll just say that you’re right.”) Mom hates anything with discernable percussion (“thumpy” music, as she calls it), and much of the music I like is decidedly “thumpy” by her standards. So this way I could listen and have something to work by, and she didn’t have to hear it. With a bud in one ear and the other hanging around my neck, I could hear everything everyone had to say, too. And the day went much faster and more calmly for me with the music. I’d have to say it was money very well spent.

The resident juvenile felines are already showing very distinct personalities. The little tiger-kitten is vocal and demanding, nursing constantly and noisily and fighting with the black one for whatever teat the other kitten has found. I mean, this is a cat we’re talking about. There are eight teats, and only two kittens, so the buffet line is wide open. But the tiger-kitty still wants whatever the black one has. They started the same size, but now, while both have grown visibly, the tiger kitten is perceptibly larger.

The black one, on the other hand, is quiet and calm, mewling softly and falling silent as soon as the need is met, going off to find another available seat at the counter when pushed off the first one, nursing for a time and then going to sleep.

So yesterday, when mama cat was out visiting the field I took advantage of her absence to try to sex the kittens. And guess what? The tiger kitten appears to be male, and the black one female. A friend of mine, hearing the behaviors described, had predicted that was what I’d find, and she was right. But another friend tells me that once a tom-kitten is altered, it becomes “the sweetest lug”. It’s a good thing little tiger will be undergoing that metamorphosis, or he’d be a hellion.