Transcript
One day, I went out to the barn, and there was this long-haired, pink-skinned white cat in the barn, sheltering there. And she looked like a cat that could not have been living in the wild very long, looked like an indoor cat that maybe had gotten out. And she looked in pretty good health, except her ears were dark and nasty looking. It meant another ad in the paper, looking for her home and another call to Tim the vet. Nobody answered the ad, and Tim said, “Well, we can't wait any longer. Those ears are cancerous. She has skin cancer and we've got to take them off.” So on Saturday morning, we took her over to Tim's office, dropped her off, and we were sitting in the kitchen around noon when the phone rang, and the woman said “Snowball, you found Snowball. Oh, I'll be right over to get her.” I frantically called Tim and said, “Tim, you haven't operated yet, have you?” He said “Oh yeah, I took two ears off, wasn't able to spare. She's full of kittens. So it's all done.” I tell him about the phone call, and I said, “Tim, what are we going to tell this woman? And Tim says, “Don't worry, just say “Did your cat have ears? And when she says, of course, my cat has ears. You say, well, this one doesn't so it must not be your cat.” Fortunately, the lady called back in a few minutes and said Snowball, who'd been gone for days, had suddenly reappeared, so it's not Snowball.
We name this white cat Phoebe as in Phoebe Snow, and a couple of days later, Tim brings her back to the house. And Tim has shaved both sides of her head so that he could do the surgery, so she's got no ears, the sides of her head are smooth and she's got this mohawk in the middle but the mohawk is orange from the betadine that they've used to disinfect the area. And she's already starting to plump up with these kittens so it looks like Tim has brought us a punk harp seal. Phoebe has her kittens and, of course, she puts them up in the barn behind a bunch of wood that was unstable and humans couldn't get to so her kittens grow up feral.
One day, I walk out to the barn, I open the door. It's early in the morning, and there, right in front of the door, she has a rat that she's killed and she's opened it up and it's splayed out, and these kittens are in a little circle around the rat, like she's teaching them where the yummy parts are. We found homes for all the kittens and considered letting Phoebe stay there, but she didn't get along with the other barn cats, and our rule was if the latest cat in didn't get along with the other cats that we'd find a home for the latest cat in. So, again, I start looking for a home for Phoebe, and this very nice woman at work agrees to take Phoebe. She hears the story, and she feels sorry for Phoebe, and she says, “Yeah, of course, I’ll take her.”
She, her husband and her two sons come out to the farm on a Saturday afternoon, sort of late on Saturday afternoon. And they come out to the orchard where Martha and Tim and I are sitting around and we've been drinking beer, and there's a bunch of beer cans scattered around us. I go and get Phoebe, bring her up, and the two little boys run and hide behind their father, and all the woman's husband can say is, “That cat's got no ears.” Well, the three of us think this is really, really funny, and we think we are among the most amusing people in the world, and we start sort of ad-libbing. “Well it's true the cat has no ears, but that won't be any problem. You just can't let her out in the rain because, if you do, her head will fill up with water and that that would be bad, but you could make some little ears for her. You could make some little cat ears, and put them on a rubber band and she could wear them outside. Guess you're not limited to cat ears. According to the season, I guess you could make little antlers, or at Easter you could give her little rabbit ears.” We think this is hilarious and unfortunately, the very nice woman is not amused by the whole circumstance, and she herds her shocked husband and her fearful boys back to the car, cat in the arm, and they drive off with Phoebe who lived happily ever after from there.
This history that's recounted in the stories of rescue cats is something that was delivered to my daughters. My daughters grew up on the farm with us rescuing cats, and it became part of their tradition as well. Both of them continued to bring home cats when we moved into other houses beyond the farm. Both of them continued when they moved out on their own and I think of it as a as a gift to them, that they think it's normal for people to rescue cats and dogs, and basically, every other living thing they ever come across that needs rescuing. Our lives would have been a lot less rich if it weren't for all of these cats. So, I look back with a great deal of fondness at this time and the many encounters we've had over it. I'm going to tell a few stories about dogs now. I’m finished with the cat stories. Not nearly so many stories about dogs, but I’ll tell a few stories about dogs next.
Please join us for next time. Thanks!
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