Cats' Paw

I love the view out of my back door. No matter what the weather I drink my morning coffee standing on my back porch. Most of my four acre back yard gets mowed just often enough to prevent the growth of bushes and trees. Beyond that are hundreds of acres of virgin forest. Wild animal sightings are common. Our dog Buster does a good job of keeping the 'coons away from the garbage can. Our nearest neighbor lives half a mile down the road; far enough that we can't see their lights at night, so there is little to keep us from feeling at one with nature.

Thus, when I came home from work one evening I was surprised when my young daughter came running up to me carrying a wicker basket. "Daddy, daddy, look what I found on the back porch! Can I keep them?"

In the basket were three mewling kittens. "Oh, no honey. They're much too young. They must go back to their mother."

"But daddy," she whined. "We don't know where their mother is! Look, this was in the basket with them." She held out a note that was scrawled on a torn piece of paper in some sort of cheap brown ink.

It said simply, "Please help"

I looked at my wife, who stood in the kitchen door with arms crossed and lips pressed together. "No mother?" I asked. She merely shook her head. "Well, I guess we can't just let them die."

"Oh, thank you daddy! Thank you, thank you!" Becky hugged me around the waist as only a young girl can.

"When she came home from school Buster was going crazy in the back yard," my wife said. "When she opened the back door to call him in there was the basket. He's been acting strange, so I left him outside."

That was unusual. Buster was usually a happy-go-lucky kind of guy. Although he would chase anything that got too close to the house he had never been known to catch anything; even an unconscious 'possum. Now I called him in and led him to where Becky sat with the basket on her lap. As he approached her he stopped. His head went down and his lips pulled back in a snarl. He growled as if facing a mortal enemy.

I knelt and put my arms about him. "Hey, what's the matter buddy? Are you jealous? We all love you as much as we ever did."

"Daddy, will Buster hurt the kittens?"

"No. honey. You know Buster would never hurt anything. He just needs time to get used to them. We'll let him stay outside for awhile."

My wife ruled that while Becky might pet the kittens she must leave them in the basket and that we (meaning me) would take care of them. She gave Becky a ragged old towel to put in the basket with them. We feared that they were too young to be weaned from their mother, but when we put down a bowl of warm milk they pounced on it and lapped it down.

When I went to bed the basket was on the floor within arm's reach. I was awakened in the middle of the night by all three kittens standing on my face and licking sweat off my brow. I put them back in the basket and tucked the towel tightly around them. In the morning I found they had escaped again. I found them with their front paws in Buster's food dish devouring Dog Chow.

Over the next three weeks those little monsters consumed a quart of milk and a pound of Kitten Chow a day. They drove my wife to distraction, prowling the house like panthers in the jungle. She never knew where they would pounce on her, always working in concert. On the other hand they were putty in Becky's hands. Once we found them dressed in her dolls' clothes and purring like furry chainsaws.

Buster never did warm up to them. I spent hours in the back yard practicing my golf swing with Buster happily shagging balls for me. I wasn't sure what to do if Buster didn't warm up to Hickory, Dickory and Doc. If nothing else I wasn't sure who would win if it came to a fight. I knew I didn't want to be in the middle of it. If it came to that I definitely didn't want Becky to get caught up in it.

Then one night a knock came at the back door. When I opened all I could see was a figure silhouetted in front of the full moon. Then she stepped into the kitchen and the light fell on her. She had triangular ears atop her head and whiskers sprouting beneath her button nose. I was somewhat embarrassed to see three sets of nipples on her abdomen.

"Iii hhaff chhoome ffoorr myy baabees"