Bursties was aptly named, but I didn’t know it when I named her. I named her Bursties because she popped — appeared to burst — all over the place as a kitten, as healthy, happy kittens always do.
But she lived up to her name later on, too, despite settling down into a more sedate cat-hood.
Bursties was one of perhaps a dozen barn/indoor-outdoor cats we had in Cle Elum where my parents owned a 300-acre farm/ranch for ten years. These cats weren’t spayed or neutered (shame on us!), so occasionally we’d get another litter of kittens.
THE DAY BURSTIES BURST
I came home from school one day to find my mother in a rare state of obvious mirth, smiling ear-to-ear.
I asked her, “What’s up?”
She beckoned me with her forefinger to follow.
She took me into my bedroom, went to the closet, and pointed at the closet floor.
Inside was Bursties with five kittens just hours old.
“awwww!” I cooed, evincing a proud purr from Bursties. “You have beautiful babies!”
Mom could keep her experience to herself no longer
She told me, “She wanted company while she gave birth. Since you were away, she chose me. I tried to leave several times, but every time I did, she’d meow and come after me, dropping another kitten behind her! So, I spent the entire afternoon as a midwife, sitting here telling her what a great job she was doing!”
AWWWWWWWW!!!!
So mom was way behind on her to-do list and glad to have me back home to ooh and ahh over this miracle of birth so she didn’t have to anymore. But I could also tell that the experience had tickled her pink.
Mom wasn’t an animal lover
My mother wasn’t a natural animal lover. From an early age, geese chased her, bats dive-bombed her, and dogs bit her. She was the only person my serval son, Deaken, ever bit — and he bit her twice! (For perfectly legitimate reasons, explained in my book SERVAL SON: Spots and Stripes Forever)
Oh! I forgot! He bit me once, too, for a perfectly legitimate reason. The vet was giving him an injection that he said would sting like crazy, so “Hold him tight!” But I didn’t want to unduly upset Deaken by holding him tight — cats hate being physically restrained– so he bit me while trying to bite the syringe — and immediately “apologized” using body language! (That’s in SERVAL SON, too.)
I’m amazed Mom let me have as many animals as I had as a kid
I’m sure they weren’t her idea. They were mine.
Because from the moment I first saw one, I was enamored of every being that skittered, flittered, slid, or swam.
And they were pretty darned crazy about me, too:
Mom told me birds and butterflies used to land on me: “It was like watching a Disney movie!”
You can see here, little as I was, that the cat in my arms is serene and happy, not freaked out
Most of my best friends were animals. Seriously! Except for a few close friends as a grade school kid in Spanaway — Jessie Haire (now Richards) and Penny and Judi Cooper, — and Karen and Kathy Kraft in Cle Elum, I didn’t have a robust social network. I still don’t. My heart has always beat, mostly, to allow me to continue writing and hanging with animals, new and old.
That’s why I’ve decided to spend the next several posts (or more) writing about animal adventures that didn’t make it into any of my books or into my KrisandKritters.com website.
Helen Schofield suggested I do something like this two years ago while she was visiting from New Zealand, but it seemed like such an overwhelming task that I discarded the idea.
But now that my writing career has taken a hit due to people trying AI (which they will regret, but that’s for them to find out; one of my best clients already has and will be back soon, she says), I have ample time to spend writing for my own pleasure, and yours.
If you’re an animal lover, stay tuned. If you’re not an animal lover, hang around. I have a feeling you will be by the time this series ends!
