A cat story with relevance to current events, Pt. 4

My Mom took the cat from my sister. He settled into her arms and began to purr. Her love of gray cats was as deep as my Dad's love for her, so after much debate (and another call to the weird people, who wouldn't answer their phone) he decided we could keep it. As my Mom rubbed the cat's ears, she asked what his name was. I looked at my sisters and realized the creepy couple hadn't told me. So now we had to name him. Since he was an adult cat, we decided to try to figure out what his name had been instead of naming him something new. We started with common things like Kitty, Harry (which didn't make Mom laugh like we thought it would,) Thomas, Spot, and so many others I can't remember. The only name he responded to was Smokey, so that became his name.

The next Saturday, my Mom was sitting in her chair holding Smokey and rubbing his stomach. All of sudden, she turned him over, lifted up his tail, and looked between his legs. We knew what she was doing; that was how you checked the sex of an animal. But why was she doing it? Her look of confusion was discomforting. She called my Dad over, who confirmed Smokey was in fact, a boy. But her look of confusion turned to one of worry. Her worries were justified two weeks later when Smokey went into labor.

My Mom has always had a weak stomach, so Dad was the official kitten midwife in our house. And it was always a fun time for everyone. This birthing session was a little less joyous than all the others had been, though. The entire time he sat with Smokey, Dad mumbled indiscernible things under his breath. None of us kids ventured close to him, because we knew our little surprise had blown up to something we could now not control. But despite our Dad's anger with us, he gently helped Smokey deliver three healthy little kittens, two girls and a boy.

As kids tend to do, we each claimed a kitten as our own. I claimed the gray, tiger striped girl and named her Annie. The boy kitten went to my sister Kristen. The other girl kitten, with her distinctive painted face, was Karin's. That kitten squawked all the time and was very annoying. We name her Tammy after the distinctively painted-face Tammy Faye Baker, who at the time was squawking all over the news about her scandalous husband. (And thus the relevance to current events; Tammy Faye died last weekend after a battle with cancer. That's all the relevance I have, but it made me remember the cat story. There you go.) When the kittens were weaned from their mother, we tried unsuccessfully to give them away. Dad again caved to his family and we had three more cats in the house. But the day after his decision, my cat Annie, disappeared.

The story continues tomorrow...