The Latest Cat Saga

For a couple of months, we've been complaining about the cats.  In August 2011, Philip got two kittens from the Christopher family, naming them Toby and Tico.  Turned out Toby was the girl and Tico the boy, but that didn't bother him.  In fact, he was inspired to build a scratching post,

a cat house and a catwalk around the roof of the garage.  They were sweet and cute and playful and spent some time indoors (a first for our farm family), and Toby started showing signs of expecting more kittens in the spring.  While we vacationed in California, she gave birth - possibly to only one kitten, possibly to more who didn't live.  Inbreeding, I suspected.  Naranja, an (obviously) orange kitten, was sweet and cute and playful.  Philip had lots of fun with him, as Tico had disappeared in a tomcat sort of way (he showed up once with a bullet in his leg, but once he could hop and leap about with only three legs, he was gone again).  Soon Toby looked like a pregnant mama once again.  We were not thrilled.

A few days before David's wedding, Naranja started acting very strangely, having what looked like seizures or choking.  Within ten minutes he died in a crying Philip's arms.    We buried him, consoled by the kittens to come.  While we celebrated with the happy couple in North Dakota, the kittens arrived - five of them!  They were sweet and cute and playful, but there were so many.  Philip manfully named them all - Huck, Rex, Smoky, Gypsy and Padfoot.

 We dealt with the litter training and taming - they really were fun.  By bringing them to a 4-H meeting, we managed to give away two of the females, leaving us with Rex and Smoky, males; and female Gypsy.  Philip decided he wanted to keep one kitten and Toby; we decided they would be fixed, so no more kittens would be spawned.  At first we planned to keep Gypsy, but Rex soon endeared himself to us as a calmer, friendlier cat, so we settled on him.  Alas, it was not to be.

On Wednesday, Pete and I returned from a meeting at church to find the dogs barking at Rex.  Whether Rex was being a male and bristling, whether the dogs smelled something else on him, or whether there was some other explanation, we don't know.  Pete drove to the mailbox, and when he parked in the garage, he heard Rex meowing under the van.  Did the dogs shake him and break his spine, or did he race under the vehicle and get run over?  In either case, he had no control over his hind section.  He didn't appear to be in pain as he quietly lay in the laundry room, and died about an hour later, as Pete was preparing to put him down.

Philip and I cried over Rex, and realized that we really don't want to see the cats dead, as we had been joking about.  We're not complaining about the cats now.  How often we take things for granted, when nothing is for certain in this life.  Thanks be to God that He is certain, and so is the next life!