A proper post was supposed to be scheduled for today. For some reason it went live immediately rather than waiting for its scheduled time. The reason may have had something to do with my distracted state. The post had been written more than ten years ago. I'd rewritten most of it. I felt that I'd been looking at screens more than long enough. Anyway, today's proper post was "To a Young Leftist," below.
Other than that...we're all still alive. I went out as far as the porch yesterday morning, mindful of the Cuteness Hazards. Pastel's kittens are just starting to bounce and pounce. Still frisky. Still growing. No fevers, no worms. Pets already; they see me and scamper toward me and want to be picked up. I bought a cheap, tacky brushed nylon house gown for the purpose of letting white cats shed on it. The kittens recognize that gown as the one they're allowed to practice climbing on.
They are clever kittens. They know that house gown from the one I've been wearing in the house, or from the long shapeless new-style dress I wore yesterday. They know to wait on the porch to be brought inside for the night. Dora knows her name, and comes when called. Diego and Dilbert at least respond to their names, and Drudge...well, there's a possibility that he can tell that his name has meanings other than "great pioneering blog." When I take them out to their mother for breakfast in the morning, Dora and sometimes some of the others will pause to rub against or pat me, as if saying "thanks," before running to the food supply. I don't remember Pastel ever doing anything that showed unusual cleverness. Is Borowiec a social cat, or do the kittens get their cleverness from their grandmother?
They're starting to show personalities. Diego is the biggest, strongest, fastest, most coordinated, etc., and Dora pushes herself to keep up with him. Part of his size is fluff. They're all Mixed Hair, not as super-fluffy as their father but much furrier than their mother's family. I don't think Diego is going to be one of those bobcat-sized cats. I think he was just born as much as a week later than kittens normally are born, after conception, and is bigger, etc., than a normal month-old kitten because, if Pastel hadn't held these kittens inside her up to the last possible moment, he would have been a five-week-old kitten. But even for a five-week-old kitten he's precocious. They all are, a bit. Fortunately the giant monster kitten is a sweet, gentle purr-ball. No rough play; so far, at least, he actually seems to like being rolled over and tickled, by me, by his mother, or by his siblings.
Dilbert is the complete snugglebunny. I worry about him. Sometimes a snuggly kitten is just competing with siblings for attention, and sometimes it has some sort of not yet visible defect or disease. You never used to hear of cats dying of cancer, but with "today's safe, new pesticides" it happens.
Drudge is the most likely to wait and see what the others are doing, and how it's working for them, before moving to join them, but he moves as fast as the others once he starts moving.
Dora, who is on the large, fast-growing side for her age but looks tiny because her siblings are oversized, has a pretty face. She knows she's special--she's the girl. She seems to think about things. When I've played keep-away games with these kittens, Dora's been the one to think of going around the obstacle in a different way. She was the first to react to me when their eyes were just starting to open and the first to approach me when they started toddling about. She worked out furiously, toddling in circles, keeping up with Diego, stretching and developing those little legs...
Until her eyelids were stuck together by poison in the air irritating the tear ducts and eyelids. When that happens she can seem slow and whiny, until she's worked out a way to claw the mats off her eyes so she can see out again. And her face isn't pretty any more. It was and it will be, but it looks pretty horrible now, with the clogged, puffy eyes. All of their faces do.
All four of these kittens share their mother's tendency to react to "pesticide" vapors in the air with inflammation of the tear ducts and eyelids, and this new spray seems to target that area even in humans--certainly in me. Their faces have lost all their charm. They're no longer so marvellously quiet, either. They whine. How not?!
It was a warm, humid day. Weather-breeder, I thought hopefully. It takes more than one day's rain to wash this new stuff out of the air, but every rain helps.
Anyway the adult cats were nibbling their kibble, and the kittens were getting ideas...about the kind of food they still eat, of course. "With twenty-four cat tears down there, there has to be a little extra milk for us," I could almost hear big greedy Diego murmuring to big greedy Dilbert, who agreed, and all four kittens would leap down and try to attach themselves to any adult cat whose back was not fully arched. Silver, who is in the family way, and Serena, who has been trying to get into it, objected very vigorously to this. Less social cats would have been hissing, spitting, and slapping. Silver and Serena might hiss or growl at a niece/nephew or grandkitten, but that's as far as they can bring themselves to go, so when the kittens persist they just run away, routed by the infantry.
"Why don't you all practice climbing?" I said, allowing the kittens to attach themselves to the yoke of the house gown dedicated especially to having cat hairs all over it, and just then the odd jobs man drove past and stopped in the road. He had that "I am going on an errand and would be happy to do a few more errands, for tips" look on. I walked quickly through the steamy front yard wearing a sort of collar of kittens. At the sight of a strange human they all prudently crawled around to the back.
"These are that bleary-eyed cat's kittens," I explained. "They were not bleary-eyed until a certain fool sprayed poison. Now they are. So am I. Anyway I need to go to Wal-Mart. Are you going that way?"
"Don't know when," he said. "I was just going into Gate City for some baler twine. We are baling hay today. Likely we'll be baling hay and putting it up all through tomorrow and Saturday."
"Oh well," I said, "if somebody is mowing hay already you'd better get right on with that job, before it rains."
"Not supposed to rain till Monday," he said, and disclosed that the Professional Bad Neighbor's family's territory, where so many houses were empty and gardens deserted, had been designated a hay field. "It's three or four miles wide, three or four miles long. It will take the rest of the week."
By "miles," I thought, he probably meant "acres." The stereotype used to be that men became coal miners because they had learning disabilities that disqualified them for other jobs. It's not true of all coal miners but the odd jobs man does tend to mix up not only words, but ideas, in some specific categories, like units of measurement. He's a good mechanic, of the kind that know which wrench to use, but not necessarily how to describe it in fractions-of-an-inch or centimeters.
The kittens and I went back to the porch. First Diego, then Dilbert, and then even Dora tried to nurse on my hands. This is a sign of trust and affection in kittens. They think that since you are acting motherly, you might have some sort of milk supply, so they pat and lick and then sink their little baby teeth into your hand. Pushing back, hard enough to tip their heads up and back, is the most efficient way to break this habit. Then Pastel came up on the porch and looked after her babies. She's not a fast learner or a creative thinker like Dora, but there's nothing wrong with her mother cat instincts. I went back inside and did some coughing, sneezing, and eye-mopping, because I'd been out in the poisoned air.
Back came the odd jobs man. "The store was out of baler twine. I called" (the Bad Neighbor)."from the store. He is going into Kingsport for baler twine. For ten dollars I'll take you to Norton."
So we went to Norton. Wal-Mart had rolled back some prices, including the price on one of the things I always buy at Wal-Mart. They had run completely out of that. I bought some things my shopping list does not usually have room for, instead.
"It's hard to shop fast in Wal-Mart," I said, coming out of the store. I didn't ask, but the odd jobs man looked as if he'd collected wages for the day on his way into Gate City, got some errands done, and seen some friends in Norton. Had that not been the case, he would probably have lost the day's work and wages, because four hours had passed since he'd gone into Gate City for baler twine and, allowing time to take me home, he was still an hour away from the hay fields.
When I hauled in the groceries my poisoned body felt exhausted. Nap time! I woke up just in time to take the cats their dinner, in time for Pastel to eat, visit the sand pit, and feed her brood in time for them to be brought in for the night. Serena was the only cat I'd ever seen keep kittens outside all day and get them lined up beside the door at sunset, but Pastel has been doing that, too.
Serena has not been "mothering" these grandkittens, the way she did Silver's kittens, another year, because she's been thinking about kittens of her own. This is not to be mistaken for lack of interest in Pastel's kittens. Twice now Dilbert has squeaked on a more plaintive note than his usual whining-like-a-young-creature-who-suddenly-doesn't-feel-perky-any-more, and Serena's given me a look that said "I will personally kill anyone who hurts any of my grandkittens." If he'd screamed in pain, she might have attacked me.
Serena really seems to feel that Manx-cat loyalty should be reciprocated. She doesn't like the kittens being pets. I've tried to deal with her expressions of resentment as if they were simply about status, as cats' jealousy of their humans usually is. I think there's more to it, though. She seems to feel that our bond ought to be exclusive. I think the idea of an exclusive relationship with a cat is ridiculous, but I have been very close to Serena for a long time. I share her feeling about her grandkittens.
But last night we had a nice little game of keep-away, and when the adult cats headed for the sand pit the kittens scampered about in the yard for a few minutes. Then the rain began.
Had we inadvertently done the Bad Neighbor a good turn, keeping all that hay from being mown and baled before the rain?
Or had he stuck to his plans in his pigheaded sociopathic way, paid other men to get all the hay baled, and left the bales of hay on the ground when the sun went down...and the rain started to fall, just about enough rain to guarantee mold in every dang bale of hay?
I am not the nicest of people. I loved the idea of the Bad Neighbor having planted all of his, his parents', his brother's, and his sister's land in hay, rented machines and paid three or four men to mow and bale all of that hay, and left all of those precious bales on the ground through a nice, steady, soaking rain.
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