The Cat That Wasn't

Last week Thursday when I opened my door, a tiny, fluffy Siamese-ish kitten fled in terror away from the opening door, across the driveway, and frantically away into the irises and the underbrush.

Mentally I sighed. There is a mostly-abandoned house (meaning the people come up once a year on Independence Day and mow the waist-high grass in the driveway) next to our house, and sometimes a mom cat will use their shed to have her kittens in.

And we live in SouthWest Outer Nowhere, and sometimes people will drop kittens off -- you know, at a house in the country -- hoping "someone" will take them in.

Unfortunately, my husband does not like cats. The man cooks. He vacuums. He washes dishes. But he doesn't like cats. So this house in the country doesn't take in cats, and I'm a knitter who doesn't have a cat. Everything has trade-offs, I guess.

Friday I saw the kitten in the driveway once.

Saturday, the 89-degree Saturday, I saw the kitten sleeping in the heat on top of the well pit cover. I put out a dish of water and some food for it. It was mostly wild and never let me get close enough to touch it.

Sunday I looked and looked, but I didn't see it at all, anywhere. Not even dead on the (busy) road.

The country is not a safe place to drop off little fluffy whitish kittens with gray faces and gray tails and blue eyes. Coyotes (and we have coyotes) will eat a kitten. Great horned owls will eat a kitten. The 70-mile-an-hour double-bottom gravel trucks will flatten a kitten without even leaving a bump.

I wish people who drop off kittens in the country would have their cats spayed or neutered.