The Cats I’ve Loved: A Mom Who Gave Her Kittens To Me

how I wound up with four little fur-balls

Back in the mid-1990s, when I was in graduate school down at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, after spending my first year living in the dorms, I moved into a run-down trailer older than me in Malibu Village mobile home park. My trailer was way down towards the very back of the park, bordered on one side by thick woods. There was just one trailer further back along the dirt road than mine, and after that it was scrub bushes and plants, as well as a dumpsite for dirt, debris, and scrap, all the way back to the raised railroad tracks, overgrown with blackberry brambles and wild hops.

The first summer I lived there, a stray mother cat had already given birth to a litter of five kittens. The people who lived next door regularly put out cat food for her, and I’d give her some lunch meat from time to time. Those five kittens nearly nursed the life out of her. I remember seeing them, already grown quite big, teaming up on her. One or two would knock her down and another would latch on, until scratching and screaming, she would get them off and run into the woods. That litter remained feral, and either migrated elsewhere or were run over by the dump trucks bringing loads to the site.

The next spring, those neighbors had moved, and I’d begun feeding and petting that mom cat, whose belly swole up. And then she disappeared for a while, and came back, her belly no longer full of kittens. She was uninterested in entering my trailer, until one fine, warm spring day.

The Kittens Arrive

I was outside tending to the flowers and herbs I’d planted. I had the door and all of the windows open, airing my place out. I saw her out of the corner of my eye, walking out of the woods through my yard. And then as she trotted right up my steps, I heard the sound.

A tiny, high-pitched mew. She had a little ball of fluff in her mouth. She went into my trailer, was hidden past the door for a moment, and then darted out and into the woods.

I watched her come back in a minute or two with another tiny kitten in her jaws, carry it up the steps, vanish into my trailer, and then head back out. This time I stopped my work and went in the trailer to see what happened next.

She came back with a third kitten, while I sat at my kitchen table waiting for her. Then I saw where she had been leaving those kittens. My refrigerator had an open spot at its front base. She wriggled her head and shoulders under it, and came out with no kitten in her mouth. She looked at me for a moment, and then was out the door.

She brought one final furry package in and left it in the same spot. After rubbing her head on my leg and getting a bit of scratching from me, she took off.

I went and looked under the refrigerator. Four sets of eyes looked out at me, tiny mouths open wide, hissing at me in fear. I knew I couldn’t leave them under there. The fridge was old and I expected it had open machinery they might get into and get hurt by. I knew there was some bites and scratches inflicted by sharp little teeth and claws in my immediate future.

I closed the door, got down on my side, and scooped out three of the kittens one right after another, depositing each one on the kitchen floor behind me, so they couldn’t easily sneak back under the refrigerator.

The fourth one had already started crawling up into the refrigerator’s innards, and although I could feel it, I wasn’t going to try to pull on its tiny body, since that might hurt or even kill it if it was really stuck. I had to empty the fridge, then pull it out and tilt it back, so I could see how far the kitten had crawled up in there. Fortunately, it wasn’t too far, and I wriggled her out.

I say “her” because it turned out she was one of two calico girls, spotted with black, white, and orange. Clearly the massive, unfortunately brain-damaged, tough but friendly tom Big Old Boo was their sire. This one, I would later realize was the runt of the litter, and while she wasn’t missing any organs, she exhibited a mean temper.

Mom Cat Returns (For A Bit)

The mom cat came back that night to nurse her kittens, who by then I’d placed in a recycling bin lined with old clothes. She laid on the floor while I took them out, let them suckle until she decided they were done, and then she scratched at the door to be let back outside. She did that several times.

Then the old neighbors arrived. They said that since they had been taking care of her for years, and heard she had the latest batch of kittens, they were ready to take all of them off my hands. Those neighbors were good people, but I’d already fallen in love with the brood, so we compromised. They adopted the mom-cat. I kept the four kittens.

They also gave me a ride there and back to Walmart, where I picked up a litter-box, litter, a supply of kitten kibble, and some ground beef that I’d soon share with them. And then it was just me and the four.

There were the two calico girls, and two slightly bigger black and white boys. Three of them had markings like mustaches or goatees. That and the number of their little pride gave me the first idea for their names.

Naming The Kittens

They became for a while the Four Musketeers. The one boy with a goatee was christened Aramis. The girl with a goatee took on the name Porthos. The boy without any face marking was the young beardless D’Artangnan. And the ill-tempered runt, she was obviously Athos.

I raised them, and they played, stalked each other and my body parts, curled up and slept with me on the couch or in n my sleeping mat. And they ate, and grew, ate some more, and grew yet more.

D’Artagnan was the first to leave, adopted by my friend and fellow grad student, who renamed him Dion. Little Athos left a month later, as my girlfriend and I broke up and she took the kitten with her to Saint Louis. So it was just me and the brother and sister Aramis and Porthos.

They didn’t keep those names long though. Eventually they wound up with dozens of alternatives, but the two I gave them, which ended up their official names on all their paperwork were very simple and straightforward. Rather unimaginative, but reflective of a deep love we developed for each other.

I called them, and they came to, “Little Boy” and “Little Girl”. There are many more stories to tell about them, but this is where I’ll leave off tonight.

---

Gregory Sadler is the president of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.