One step forward, two back… the importance of learning patience (which I sorely lack)

Of course I spoke too soon on Saturday, so overjoyed I was after the kittens made themselves so visible, almost squeezable they were so close. Since then (three mornings now) I have not seen a single hair on their darling heads, and with each passing morning I get more anxious. I thought I was right there: this close to trapping time. And I could not be further away. I don’t even know where they are. The one hint I got today was evidence that a little bit of food had been eaten in the site where mama had hidden them days ago.

GAH. At times like this I wonder if I have the personal makeup to do this work. I take it almost personally when they go to great lengths to avoid me, even though I know in my head that they’re just in survival mode.

The additional frustration is that right now the ravine is having a yellowjacket problem. I no sooner put food down than a dozen bees begin buzzing around threateningly. It was unnerving to see the babies trying to eat food while recoiling from the bees in their faces. (Of course I had to look up whether jellowjackets could kill kittens, because I don’t have enough to worry about. They can’t.  😉 It’s possible the bees are why Mama Grace moved them. I have no idea. They are feral cats, and I am a human, and even though I often feel like I understand completely what they’re thinking and needing, other times the space between us is completely opaque. Like a curtain Grace raises and lowers depending on her defenses on any given day. (Some days greeting me with an friendly rub against the fence and tail-in-the-air greeting, other days disappearing in a white flash the second she senses my presence.)

Clearly my challenge if I want to keep doing this work is to learn p-a-t-i-e-n-c-e… something that has never come easy to me. I found comfort just now in discovering in my “cat log” that it took me almost two months to trap Ariel, Oberon and Puck – last summer’s kittens – after seeing them for the first time. And it’s been only two weeks since I first saw Frankie and Blue Baby. Time to take a deep breath, burn a candle and let the universe help me out.