Well, this week, that makes sense. I'm never sure exactly what Sommersburr is dissatisfied with, apart from the Cat Sanctuary not being his home and me not being his human, but I can imagine...a Cat Sanctuary Interview post. (This is not a "conservative" post. It's about human relations, so it's political, but it's not been claimed by a political party.)
PK: So, you don't like the generic version of Purina Cat Chow as much as you like the generic version of Purina Kitten Chow. I'm sorry about that. I'll pick up another bag of Kitten Chow as soon as I go back to the store that sells it.
Sommersburr: Well, that, and also everything else.
PK: You are now a writer's cat so why don't you tell the readers about "everything else"?
Sommersburr: Where do I start? I mean "everything else." I miss my human. I miss my home. I miss my long-gone youth. A flea was biting me; thank you for chasing it off the top of my head, anyway. I feel bad that Serena feels bad.
Serena: Oh I'll get over it. Don't mind me.
Sommersburr: Well, she's a large cat and carried it well, but when she started to look pregnant, did she ever look pregnant.
Serena: Without uttering a single "meow" I told our human to clean out the box where I spent my kittenhood and set up a place for my kittens. She was a good human and is now allowed to pick me up, which I've not allowed since she sent my two little Tuxie kittens away. She watched them wriggling around inside me and asked, "Are there four of them?"
Silver: If I'd been in that sort of shape there might have been four. Or maybe only two. I'm still growing.
Serena: There were eight of them. Four male, four female. One little male, who looked like his great-grandfather, was born dead. The other seven were all full-sized and very lively.
Some bigger than others, and as you see, if there hadn't been so many of them they might have waited another day or two to be born. Still, they were crowded inside and wanted to come out all at once, all during one night. They could have been stronger when they were born, but they were far enough along that they could have lived, too. They came out the way I've been told I was when I was born, tiny and wrinkly, but "a hand full" for the human. They all had pink skin, and all seven living ones had spots of color on their backs and heads. It was a long night but the human looked in at me and said, "What a nice clean warm nest you've made! I'll leave you alone. I know you know what you're doing." The air grew very cold but I kept my babies warm..
Sommersburr: Then, just as the sun started to come up and we thought it might be safe for Serena to go out for a drink of water, there was one of those horrible smells humans seem to like in the air...the one they use to make the kudzu and Spanish Needles grow.
Swimmer: The human sneezed a lot. I heard. I was near the door and I sneezed too.
Serena: I came back before my babies were cold, and every one of their hearts had stopped. And the human came out to serve breakfast. I said, "Look at my babies! Do something!" She said, "I'm not going to bother your babies, Serena. I'll look at them when it's not so cold. Wow, the air temperature actually is below freezing. What seems like an early spring aaalways leads to a frost in early May..." I bit her hand. I said, "No, look at them!"
PK: It's hard to tell whether kittens are dead or sleeping. We brought them inside, all snug in their blanket, and set them near the heater and tried to resuscitate them. No use.
Serena: It was my fault. She wanted to put the nest box in the office room, where I had spent my infancy in it.
Silver: Maybe the walls would have kept out the poison vapor along with the cold...
Swimmer: But who knew that either of those things was going to happen? And what if the babies had lived through this poisoning and then died in the next one? We smell that smell almost every month from one direction or another.
Sommersburr: I never saw anyone die of it before.
Serena: Some kittens do. These two, and the other two who were born with them, were ill for a few days. The human gave them charcoal. Since then Silver's not been quite so ill again, but Swimmer feels it every time.
Sommersburr: Well, so do I actually, but not as badly as little Swimmer does.
PK: I feel it too, of course. It's never killed me yet but it's worse than any silly little chest cold like this virus that's got all the humans' knickers twisting this spring. Monday and Tuesday were beautiful days but I didn't feel like hauling the laptop back into town. Wednesday was wet, and even today, waiting for a car pool, I felt a couple of waves of nausea in the morning even though I had nothing much to lose from that. While as for the kittens...Sometimes kittens do go into comas and come out again. I didn't bury them until Wednesday. They still hadn't gone stiff but they'd started to smell nasty. Burying kittens in the rain made me think of a poem. Whoever poisoned all of us, on a night when no green plant was going to grow anyway, should not see the sun again; he should die in the darkness--painfully!--and be buried in the rain.
Serena: That wouldn't bring my babies back. Well, if their father and I live so long we can try again.
PK: Wouldn't it be nice if more kittens lived than died? Then you wouldn't have to keep trying to have kittens and lose them...if the wind didn't carry poison vapors. Wouldn't you like just to rest and be a grandmother?
Serena: Hah! How old was that cat my mother called old Heather when she started taking long naps every day?
PK: Six or seven. A middle-aged cat. To humans every month of a kitten's first year is like a year of our lives, and every year after that is like at least seven of our years.
Serena: Why would I want to retire earlier than she did? I'm barely full-grown. I'll be all right when the lactation cycle is over. I'm starting to feel like playing with Silver and Swimmer already--only not for very long.
Sommersburr: Isn't she a splendid Queen Cat?! I wish I could be the father of her kittens.
PK: I'm glad you can't. The world needs no more of your DNA, Sommersburr. But I have to wonder whether any amount of DNA could ever make another cat like Serena. She is amazing. Serena, can you imagine a day, however far off in the future, when you'd be content to stop giving birth to kittens and only adopt them, the way our Founding Queen Black Magic used to do? A lot of kittens get shoved into shelters at this time of year--and you can't imagine what awful places they are. Sometimes our readers try to give me guilt trips because we can't rescue more of those kittens. Could you adopt kittens as babies, the way you adopted Traveller as a brother and Sommersburr as a grandpa?
Serena: Not right away, because I was poisoned too, and my lactation cycle is shutting off. Later on I might consider it. It would depend on the kittens. And of course, even though you humans are trying to keep a distance from one another right now, you have suffered enough...
PK: I have indeed. If anyone wants to send kittens to us, they need to tell me about it first...not just wander up here and dump kittens out of a truck!
Sommersburr: And they should understand that even out in the country like this, where we're all so happy and so healthy, most of the time, the wind still carries poison! What do humans call what they need to do about that?
Everyone, loudly and clearly, including the non-talking spirit of Grandma Bonnie: BAN GLYPHOSATE!
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