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"FREE KITTUNS"
Copyright Jim Willis 2001
[email protected]
http://jimwillis0.tripod.com/tiergarten/
The sign on the mailbox post was hand-lettered on cardboard and read
"FREE KITTUNS." It appeared there two or three times a
year, sometimes
spelled this way, sometimes that, but the message was always the same.
In a corner of the farmhouse back porch was a cardboard box with a dirty
towel inside, on which huddled a bouquet of kittens of
different colors, mewing
and blinking and waiting for their mama to return from
hunting in the fields.
The mother cat managed to show them enough interest for the
first several weeks,
but after having two or three litters per year, she was worn out and her milk
barely lasted long enough for her babies to survive.
One by one, people showed up over the next several days and each took a
kitten.
Before they left the woman who lived there always said the
same thing,
"You make sure you give that one a good home -
I've become very attached to that one."
One by one the kittens and their new people drove down the long driveway
and past the sign on the mailbox post, "FREE KITTUNS."
The ginger girl kitten was the first to be picked. Her four-year-old owner
loved
her very much, but the little girl accidentally injured the
kitten's shoulder
by picking her up the wrong way. She couldn't be blamed
really - no adult
had shown her the proper way to handle a kitten. She had
named the kitten
"Ginger" and was very sad a few weeks later when her older
brother
and his friends were playing in the living room and someone
sat on the kitten.
The solid white boy kitten with blue eyes was the next to leave with a
couple who
announced even before they went down the porch steps that his
name
would be "Snowy." Unfortunately, he never learned his name
and everyone
had paid so little attention to him that nobody realized he
was deaf.
On his first excursion outside he was run over in the
driveway by a mail truck.
The pretty gray and white girl kitten went to live on a nearby farm as a "mouser.
"Her people called her "the cat," and like her
mother and grandmother
before her she had many, many "free kittuns," but they
sapped her energy.
She became ill and died before her current litter of kittens was weaned.
Another brother was a beautiful red tabby. His owner loved him so much
that she took him around to meet everyone in the family and
her friends,
and their cats, and everyone agreed that "Erik" was a handsome boy.
Except his owner didn't bother to have him vaccinated. It took all the
money
in her bank account to pay a veterinarian to treat him when
he became
sick, but the doctor just shook his head one day and said "I'm sorry."
The solid black boy kitten grew up to be a fine example of a tomcat.
The man who adopted him moved shortly thereafter and left "Tommy"
where
he was, roaming the neighborhood, defending his territory, and fathering
many kittens until a bully of a dog cornered him.
The black and white girl kitten got a wonderful home. She was named
"Pyewacket." She got the best of food, the best of care until she was
nearly five years old. Then her owner met a man who didn't like cats,
but she married him anyway. Pyewacket was taken to an animal shelter
where there were already a hundred cats. Then one day, there were none.
A pretty woman driving a van took the last two kittens, a gray boy and a
brown tiger-striped girl. She promised they would always stay
together.
She sold them for fifteen dollars each to a laboratory.
To this day, they are still together...in a jar of alcohol.
For whatever reason - because Heaven is in a different time zone, or because
not even cat souls can be trusted to travel in a straight
line without meandering -
all the young-again kittens arrived at Heaven's gate
simultaneously. They batted
and licked each other in glee, romped for awhile, and then
solemnly marched
through the gate, right past a sign lettered in gold:
"YOU ARE FINALLY FREE, KITTENS."
*******
Author's note: Please feel free to print out this story or request it as a
Word document ([email protected]).
Whenever you see "free kittens" advertised, place a copy in the mailbox
or where it can be read, along with a polite note asking the "culprit"
to
spay/neuter their pets and to contact their local humane society for
information on low-cost spay/neuter programs and advice on how to
properly place kittens in responsible homes.
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