Story

In early spring of 2010, a few things happened.

The first thing is that I got a second cat. I already had one cat, and I had been thinking about getting another before he got too used to being an only child. I was going to wait until the summer, when I was planning to move to a bigger house, but then I found out about this little kitten.

It seemed I had an old friend with a mother who had a habit of rescuing stray cats. She had taken in a stray -to get her out of the cold- who was very small and less than a year old. She didn’t even know the cat was pregnant until she gave birth, unexpectedly, to two little kittens. I had recently heard about a cat who was pregnant so young that she couldn’t safely carry the litter to term, and my heart went out to this young cat-mama, and her babies. My friends mother wanted to keep Sabrina, the stray she brought in from the cold, but already had a house of cats, and couldn’t really keep the two kittens as well. I adopted one of them, and helped find someone to take the other.

I named my new kitten Blanche, after my great-grandmother, who is matriarch of the cat ladies in my family.

***

The second thing happened while I was visiting a different friend. We were sitting in his dining room, looking out the window at the backyard, talking about all of the things you talk about with your good friends. All of a sudden, a mother cat with a litter -five or six- kittens, crossed the yard. When I asked my friend who they belonged to, he looked perplexed “no one,” he said, “they’re cute,” he said.

When I sort of mumbled “maybe we should try to do something for them” he pointed out that we couldn’t possibly help them all. Sending them to the humane society might have the effect of ending their lives, not improving them. We watched them play in the grass, and they looked so happy, but I was troubled.

I did some research. I found out about Trap Neuter Return programs (the practice of spaying or neutering and then releasing feral cats, which are unadoptable, and then releasing them, rather than killing them. Killing them has been the standard for most animal control agencies and shelters for years. To find out more about TNRs and feral cats, check out Alley Cat Allies). All of the programs I read about were in far away places. I got mad that there was nothing much like that happening in Detroit, but I felt powerless to do anything. I was young, I was broke, I was busy.

I’m not proud of this, but in the hustle and bustle of every day life, I forgot all about the litter of kittens in the backyard.

That summer, I did move, with both of my cats, into a bigger house. As it happens, a house about a block away from where I first saw that litter of kittens. Blanche was growing up, and I decided to look up how soon I should have her spayed. To my surprise, I discovered that she (at five months) could go into heat at any time, and I really needed to have it done right away. The next morning, I went for an early walk, and there were the kittens. Crossing the street by the alley that cuts all the blocks in the neighborhood in half, with their mother, and they were exactly the same size as Blanche.

I still felt powerless, but this time, I felt like I had to do something to change that powerlessness. I had practically no money, so I decided to try to raise enough money to get the litter spayed, before they all hit puberty, and all of the females were pregnant.

And so we planned a benefit. It saddens me to say, that once we had done the necessary organizational work and raised enough money to help, we never saw those first kittens again. One day when I was about to give up, I mentioned to my father how frustrated I was becoming with all of this. I could hear him smile over the phone, and he told me that my great grandmother, Blanche the Elder, had sent him out to catch stray cats when he was little, so she could have them spayed and neutered. He said “You’d better watch out or you’re gonna become Grandma!” but I could not have been more proud.

***

Somewhere along the way, it became bigger than one litter of kittens for me, though. Somewhere I stopped feeling powerless, instead I felt that I was capable of doing something, and if I was capable I couldn’t do nothing. In the memory of those first five kittens playing in the grass, stalking through the alley, following their mother and avoiding humans, we try to do what good we can, in a way that is respectful of each creature.

Blanche, around the time most of this story takes place.

-Katherine D Maurer