The Case of the Cat Ghost

To get the full benefit of this post, you'll want to read the one below, posted earlier today.

Okay, so now you know that our cat got hit by a car and that Evan took it in to be put to sleep this afternoon. On his way home from the animal hospital he picked up a kit the vet recommended that would allow us to bottle feed the kitten. He buried Emily when we got home and that was that.

After dinner I headed up to Chloe's room to get the kitten for her first feeding. Imagine my utter SHOCK at seeing EMILY in the closet with her baby!!! Now we do have another black and white cat, a male named Casey, but he looks different enough that I can tell them apart even when they're not side by side. So I know Casey wasn't in there trying in vain to feed the poor orphaned kitten. It was definitely, without a doubt, Emily. So that leaves us with a very puzzling mystery--whose cat did we put to sleep?! The only other family on the hill with a black and white cat assured me theirs was down in their basement this evening. I could have sworn on a stack of Bibles that the cat we killed and buried today was ours, but apparently not.

Lindsay reminded me that cats have nine lives--but not literally!!! I'm totally weirded out. Very glad our cat is okay, but definitely weirded out. And from now on Emily and Casey are indoor cats. Our proximity to the road is lethal. (We've lost one cat to the road and Lindsay has lost one or two.) We're also going to get safety cones to help keep the kids from getting too close to the road and to warn people who drive into our yard to watch for kids. Today's incident made us more aware of the danger to the kids.

R.I.P.

This afternoon a man came to the door to tell us a black and white cat had been hit by a car and he had just moved it to the side of the road. It was still alive, and he wanted to know if it was ours. Evan and I made sure the kids were okay and hurried down the road to see. Sure enough, it was one of ours. And as luck would have it, it's Emily, who has a three-week-old kitten that's still nursing. It broke my heart to see her lying there in great suffering, not able to understand what's going on. I cried as we moved her away from the road, over by the cemetery across the street from our house, and Evan called an animal hospital in Manchester to see about taking her in to be put to sleep. He found one and took her about 20 minutes ago.

I told Jed as gently as possible. He cried a little but he's more concerned about the kitten's loss than ours. I assured him we'll take care of it. I'm hoping Chloe never asks. If she does I'm not sure what I'll say. She feels things pretty deeply so we definitely won't give her the details. Evan is going to ask the animal hospital what we can do for the kitten.

So that's our drama for the day. I hope none of you ever have to see what we saw today!

A word of advice...

Consult with your pregnant kitty before you choose a day to start potty training your toddler. Yesterday morning I had one of those wretched experiences that made me think, "This stinks but it'll make for good blog material!"

Yesterday morning I started potty training Tucker. Bless his little heart, he took to it right away. And once he discovered he got a jelly bean every time he relieved himself, he started camping out on the potty chair whether he needed to or not. He even figured out the #2 part and was giving himself hernias trying to produce, all for the sake of that purple jelly bean! So that part made me happy. What made it not so fun is the way a boy's plumbing works. Girls are so much easier to potty train! Every time he went there was a huge mess to clean up. So a good part of my morning was spent cleaning him and the potty chair and the floor, even giving him a bath once. And in the midst of all this excitement, Emily, our very pregnant kitty, was following me around, meowing and desperate for affection. I started to suspect she was in labor, and my suspicions were confirmed when I picked her up and some nasty fluid dripped from her onto the carpet. Since cats like dark, quiet places for delivering their babies, I set up a little nest in Chloe's closet, put her in there, and shut the door. She howled and scratched for a while, but when I let her out she went back out to hallway where she'd dripped and started to nest there. Um, no, not happening. Back to the closet. She spent several solitary hours there until she produced the adorable little gray baby you see here.

Jed and Chloe have had all sorts of fascinating names for the wee one. Chloe wanted Soy Boat and Jed wanted Pistol ("because it's the color of a pistol!"), so they compromised and called it Soy Pistol. Evan and I in no uncertain terms made it clear that name wasn't sticking. Tongue in cheek, I suggested Smoky, figuring that one would get shot down for lack of originality. (My older sister, the queen of original names, never let us give our cats run-of-the-mill names when I was growing up.) But Evan agreed and the kids loved it. So Smoky it is.

I finally succumbed! I got my hair highlighted last night! And I'm thrilled with it. Lots of blond streaks. I'm growing my hair out to my shoulders and it's taking forever, so to help keep up morale I thought I'd do something different. Had a great time visiting with the hairstylist, who's a good friend in the very same stage in life that I am.

I'm not free to give out any names here, but recently the Lord did a mighty work in the lives of some friends of ours and we are rejoicing. God is powerful and still able to work miracles, and His faithfulness and love know no bounds. Nothing is too difficult for Him!