October Column Winner

Time plays no favorites, even with free kittens 

By Jeff Mullin, Enid News & Eagle

Free kittens.

That’s how the classified ad read, free kittens, followed by a phone number.

We were still dealing with the loss of the second of two male cats we had loved for the previous 16 years. My bride didn’t want any more animals. It was too painful to lose them, she said.

But I persisted, wheedling and whining until she finally gave in.

Free kittens.

So I called the number. The lady said they had two left, two little boys, one striped and the other black with two white toes on his left rear foot.

We’ll be right over, I said.

It was spring, late March. The house was on the east side of town. We found it and parked outside, walked up and knocked. There were a number of cats in the home, it turned out, including three kittens — the two boys we were interested in and a little female who, along with the kittens’ mother, was already spoken for.

The kittens were, as kittens generally are, adorable. I scooped up one, my bride the other, we thanked the lady and took our leave.

We had nothing to carry them in so we wrapped them in our sweatshirts for the drive home.

We had gotten rid of all our cat paraphernalia after we lost our last boy months earlier, so my bride had to go to the store to buy the essentials while I got to know our new little charges.

We let them loose out in our garage, where we figured any little accidents they might have would be more easily mitigated. Both immediately ran and hid. I waited, patiently. Finally the striped one, a tabby and the bolder of the two, came out of hiding and began to explore.

The black one remained hidden. I finally went looking for him. We had some cloth folding lawn chairs standing on end in one corner. He had climbed to the top of one and was hanging there by his claws, sound asleep.

A couple days later we took them to the vet for a wellness check. It turned out both were free of any terrible diseases, but both had ringworm, which required immediate treatment.

Free kittens.

As kittens will do they immediately turned the household upside down. They had been weaned but apparently hadn’t been introduced to dry cat food. When they began eating we noticed them making a strange little noise, which we later interpreted to mean the food was hurting their little mouths, but they were so hungry they were going to eat it anyway.

And eat they did. They quickly grew tall and rangy, and filled out nicely. The black one with the white toes remained the shy one, the tabby far bolder. They became inseparable, except when they took a notion to state a fur-flying, knockdown drag-out fight, which would inevitably be followed by them snuggled up together somewhere asleep.

The black one loved to invade the bathroom while I was showering and sit on the toilet seat until I finished, waiting for attention.

When I would try to write on the laptop at my desk in a spare bedroom, he would insist on tromping back and forth over the keyboard, adding his own peculiar spin to my work. When I would repair to the bedroom for a Sunday afternoon nap he would at first scratch at the door, then would head-butt it open, then romp all over me insisting that I pay attention to him in lieu of sleep.

In the evening when bedtime, and their feeding time, approached, he would sit on the table next to my recliner staring balefully at me, not taking his eyes off me until I got up to put out their food.

They turned 12 in February. We had never had a cat who lived to less than 15. We were certain we had plenty of time with them — three years, at least. But time is a trickster, a liar and thief, promising much but often delivering little.

They were boarded while we were on a recent trip when we got the call that shattered our lives.

Midnight, the black one, had died in the night. Apparently he had simply fallen asleep and never awakened. Would that we could all go that way.

So now we suffer the ache of loss experienced by every pet owner who has to bid farewell to a fur baby. His brother, the tabby, walks through the house crying for him. He doesn’t understand, neither do we.

His death has driven home the point that we are not guaranteed anything, not the next day, not the next minute, not the next second, so it behooves us to cherish every moment we have with those we love, be they human or animal.

Because of their short lifespans we know we won’t have our pets long, and we know the price of loving them is the pain of losing them. But it doesn’t make it any easier.

Free kittens. Hardly free, given the high cost of letting them go.

But at least we know one of our boys is now truly free.