MammaKitty Comes Home
A cat appeared in our little barn at feeding time this morning. One that we thought we’d found run over on the road early this summer.
Eli, my eldest son, burst in from chores with an urgent call for me to follow him to the barn where we feed the cats. “There’s a new cat in there. It looks sort of like the brown and white one we used to have, but it has no tail,” he explained. “It also looks like its face is falling off. And it’s huge.”
Though nearly unrecognizable, the cat certainly was Globule, or MammaKitty, the mother of our five nearly-grown kittens. Back in July, just as she was weaning the babies, I’d found her dead on the small bridge that crosses the creek in front of our property. Dismayed, I picked her up and threw her in the water, rather than upset the kids by bringing her home to bury.
But here she was, alive but apparently quite the worse for wear. “She looks kind of like she’s been at the bottom of the river for a few months, Mom,” teased Eli. In fact, her eyes were running from some sort of infection. She walked stiffly on her back legs and her tail was indeed half gone, though not freshly wounded. Her posture was of an animal beaten-down from recent experiences. Still, MammaKitty was able to get at the food, in spite of the distrust shown her by the other nine cats, and I felt certain I’d be able to catch her and treat those eyes in a few days. I must have thrown someone else’s cat into the river.
A week ago, a similar thing happened with another long-lost barn cat. I had risen from bed and was brushing my teeth while looking out the front windows. First thing every morning, I enjoy these few minutes watching the horses play and fight in their pasture. While admiring them, I noticed beyond the horses a rather large animal ambling down the road toward our house, just like one of the several townspeople who take walks past our house every day. The creature seemed to be dog-sized, but moved more like a cat, and in the angled morning sun made a rather intriguing picture. I watched until it neared our house, then lost sight of it behind the large pile of snow mounded at the end of our drive, courtesy of the county plough.
I continued on with my day, making breakfast and getting the kids off to school, thinking nothing more about the jogging animal until Shannon came in from chores a few hours later. “It looks like we’ve got a new cat in the barn and it won’t let the others eat,” he said. When I went out to investigate, the newcomer was waiting for me just outside the back door, mewling loudly.
The animal was Flossie, one of the first group of kittens we got when we came to the farm, and she jumped right into my arms. She’s our resident wanderer, and has been gone and back again several times in the past few years, usually in intervals of months. The last we saw her was in summer, and she was a scrawny mess when she showed up. This time she returned fat and sleek, and that’s likely why Shannon didn’t recognize her. That’s why I didn’t recognize her trotting down the road.
I imagine all the family is just coming home for the holidays. How lovely. MammaKitty is also a lot larger than when she left, and I suspect there may be some biological reason for that. She died before we could spay her, and though every one else on our farm is fixed now, she’s been off messing about in greener pastures. Now that she’s alive again, we’ll need to watch closely to see if she’s brought us some little presents.
