LETTERS FROM HOME: THE FIVE KITTENS IN A HAY LOFT

Dec. 15, 1994

Dear Pat,

The weather has turned frosty and the Christmas spirit finally began descending on our little house this week. We watched a young man cut down our tree at a local farm, mailed off the California presents with our fingers crossed, and spent most of our money. Yeah, that's the spirit.

Three of our neighbor Margie's dogs -- Lacey the Rottweiler, 'Bama the Jack Russell terrier and McGyver, her new Scotty pup -- greeted us when we arrived home from the Christmas tree farm after dark. Margie was still out in the barn, tending to the horses. When I went out with Christmas cookies and dog bones, she asked to borrow my lantern.

Seems the wild cat who lives in the loft had had the bad timing to deliver a litter of kittens just as mid-December turned frozen. Sea Note looked alarmed as we climbed the ladder next to her stall. There we found five kittens among the hay bales, so new their dried umbilical cords were still attached.

Five palm-size Christmas gifts, squirming and mewing, gray and smooth.

But they were born in a precarious place. Some members of the mother's previous litter had fallen through the boards in the loft and became prey for Lacey and 'Bama. So Margie moved them into a pet carrier against a wall of the loft and banked it with hay against the cold.

The mother was reluctant to go into the carrier while we were there but we hoped her instincts would prevail.

Inside the warm house we trimmed our tree with bubble lights and the crazy-quilt of ornaments that have travelled through the years with each of us. DC tried to veto my snowman who plays "We wish You a Merry Christmas" when you press on his head. I know someday I will love her rhinestone angel.

At DC's request, I climbed back up in the loft to check on the kittens before we went to bed. Sea Note looked frightened again.

The mother cat had disappeared. The babies were cold and lifeless. I handed the carrier down to DC. Both of us were in shock.

We took the kittens inside and wrapped them in an electric blanket. You hear about people who appear dead but are actually in a state of suspended animation caused by hypothermia. We thought there was a sliver of hope.

DC, who knows CPR, got up in the middle of the night to check on them. She contracted their tiny chests with a finger and even gave one of them mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. It made a little squeaking sound, but not from being alive.

The next morning, DC put the kitten bodies in a sack and buried them on her parents' land.

One day in California, walking along a beach with friends, we came upon a baby mouse trembling alone under a leafless bush. We ohed and ahed and walked on.

Nature is not kind or unkind, it just is, the Taoist in me says.

But I went back and got that mouse. I called around. People said, Keep it warm and feed it by dipping a corner of a cloth in milk, but they weren't hopeful. When the mouse died a few days later, I buried it outside my door. I was glad to learn I could love a mouse.

That's the thing about life: You have the freedom to make all the choices in the world but you have to live with the one you make.

I wish now I'd gone back for those kittens sooner. I wish I'd loved them better.

Maybe mother cat knew best, that they had no chance of surviving in the winter. The world is rolling in kittens. Apparently these were five too many.

They still matter.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.