Someone famous said having children is like having your heart run around in someone else’s body. Then here’s this heart of mine, frolicking off in the runt-body of a barn kitten I’d name “Eloise”—a creature barely the size of a rat. Love is always risky, but the perils of falling for something so vulnerable seem pronounced. With kohl lining around her eyes like an Egyptian queen, and orange-and-white candy-striped legs, Eloise is the most beautiful cat I’ve seen. The rest is a piebald of calico ordinariness: black, white, orange. As a kitten, she grew to be so desperately—heart-crushingly—affectionate toward me that at times she would knead the air as she looked at me, before reaching up to stroke my face. She’d converse more than any cat I’ve known (my older cats use voices mainly to kvetch). Eloise and I talk.
When my partner discovered Eloise and her four litter mates, they were tucked into a hay-bale cubby outside the henhouse, crying for their mother with voices almost inaudible; and I went to them immediately. Touching my lips to their hard, marble heads and holding them to my chest, I reassured: “she’ll come back.” And fortunately, she did. Within hours, Mama-cat was moving them to a safe, ground-level hutch at the back of a pullet pen one barn over. Yet I found the runt alone in the hay bales, bereft. Perhaps because I cuddled her when she was abandoned, Eloise and I bonded. That instance was only the first time I found her alone as Mama relocated the family (apparently, runts are left for last). Both times, I held Eloise in the warm jet stream of my breath, hushing her and praying Mama-cat would return.
Each morning, I visited the kittens in their new digs, day-by-day watching them grow. Because they slept in a tight pile at the back of the hutch, I threw down an empty feed sack and wiggled on it—snake-style—into the space…. {Read remainder of article on Patheos HERE.}