I keep thinking someone is going to call the Sheriff on me someday, as I lurk around the backs of buildings, or trespass into side yards, seeking the elusive stray.
In the last few days especially, as I’ve anxiously tried to locate the kittens I discovered a few weeks ago (see last blog post), I’ve been a class-A lurker behind a local Mexican restaurant, peering over fences and through the slats of gates. After that first sighting, the kittens had disappeared, and I feared the worst. But A) I didn’t want to give up on them, and B) I knew that Maya, the mama kitty, might be keeping her babies away by moving them around. I felt both frustrated and frantic. Finally, I realized I needed to give myself TIME – time to watch and observe, time to be quiet and watch for signs.
It proved a good strategy.
A couple of days ago I fed Maya her breakfast, then sat in my car, stalker-like, and watched her. She ambled off, and I followed her. This time, she ducked under a fenced gate behind the building, and I tiptoed in behind her when she was out of sight. Looking through two sheds, I saw all three of the babies, greeting her playfully, squealing for milk. Suddenly the weight of the last couple of weeks lifted and I was left with pure joy.
I should note that it’s been a tough couple of months on the personal level, with attempts to refinance my mortgage rejected by major banks. Nothing can kill one’s joie de vivre more than the phrase “debt to income ratio.” It’s been a wake-up call about the price I paid – quite literally – for pursuing my passion of cat rescue, paying for it all out of pocket, before I finally got smart and created the Coastside Feral Care nonprofit last year.
That said, because I’m basically a happy person, there are coins of joy in every day that no amount of financial woe can tarnish. Finding the kittens was a shiny coin indeed.
This was from this morning: the first time they came out without Maya being there.
I plan to use the drop trap on Monday to get all three at once.
Other moments of joy were provided today by seeing all six of the Higgins Farm cats together, looking happy and well.
(Only a few months ago they were eating leftover beans and rice that well-meaning farm hands left out, while their 16 kittens – now all adopted out – ran amok.)
And closer to home, I’ve had some wonderful laughs today seeing Big Mike, my resident Buddha, interacting so kindly and gently with the volatile geriatric, Ginger.
Ginger is once again in heat, thanks to the fact that her original negligent owner never had her fixed, and now at 14-15, and diagnosed with terminal mouth cancer when I brought her home from the parking lot, that surgery seemed unimportant. (If she has only a few months to live, I thought, why put her through that?) If I’d known 18 months ago that she would not only live this long, but go into heat every other damn month, I’d have had it done for sure.
Her plaintive yowling and prowling around is disruptive; everyone is freaked out by her but Mike, who allows her to sidle up to him a like the trashy girl in high school who has a thing for the quarterback. He is curious, but disinterested and nonjudgemental. 😉
Anyway, all these things fill my heart and tell me I’m doing something right with my life, even if the bean-counters disagree. Saint Francis, thanks for the daily reminders that happy IS what happy DOES.