It Could Happen to Anyone, Couldn't It?

It could happen to anyone.  One day you hear funny noises emanating from under your little porch.  You step closer and peer through the holes of the lattice.  You see movement.  Something black and white.  You jump back in fear.  SKUNK!  But it didn't spray, so you bravely step closer and peer again. Now something is growling.  And there's more than one of them.  And they're all growling now.  And hissing.  But wait a minute.  Skunks aren't grey and tiger striped.  What is lurking under the porch is a cat and her five kittens.  And Mama is very angry at the invasion of her privacy.  So you leave them alone for a few minutes.  And then wonder if they are hungry.  So you go back with some meat and toss a few pieces through the lattice.  And a pile of growling, hissing kittens falls upon the meat.  So you throw a few more pieces.  Then you run to the store and buy a bunch of cat food.  And before you know it, you're hooked.

I put that first dish of cat food down and called them.  Naturally, they wouldn't come.  I walked away and hid on the big porch to spy on them.  Eventually they came out and devoured the food.  Three of the kittens were black and white.  Two were grey tigers.

Before long, I was trained.  Three times a day, Mama and children would appear on my walkway and wait several feet away.  As they growled and hissed at me, I would place a dish of food down and walk away.  I knew my place.

Soon the family began hanging around my yard.  Mama had a lot of rules I was expected to obey.  For instance, when she trained her kids to hunt, I wasn't supposed to watch.  If she caught me, she would take them off elsewhere.   I resorted to spying on them.  And at every feeding time, the growling and hissing continued. 

I began to learn Mama's schedule.  If she held war games at dusk, they were going off on a hunting trip.  They would always come back the third day.  The first time they disappeared, I was heartbroken.  I figured they went home.  But since they always came back tired and starving, maybe they didn't have a home.  Homeless or not, when I brought them food, they would still growl and hiss at me.  Their lack of appreciation of my service was demoralizing at times.

They began to take over the porch.  I didn't mind.  It was easier to spy on them.  Within a couple weeks of spying, I could tell the kittens apart and their personalities were becoming distinct.  And even though they still growled and hissed at me, I decided to name my part time cats.  Mama was already named.  Since I didn't know the kittens' genders, the names had to be unisex.  The dark grey and white one with the big white feet and extra toes became Blue.  The bigger, furtive, dark grey and white one became Wolf.  The little tiger with the big eyes became Tiggie.  The paler tiger became Ghost.  But then I went and broke the unisex name rule for the smallest black and white cat.  She seemed so feminine, I called her Emily.

Even though the cats were named, they were still downright unfriendly.  All the growling and hissing at feeding time was really getting to me.  I became a woman obsessed.  I  was going to tame those damn cats it was the last thing I did.