the kind­ness of strangers (and of those we love)

Here’s a dose of phi­los­o­phy for you: Human hap­pi­ness is to a great extent depen­dent on flex­i­bil­i­ty of spir­it.  You have to be able to com­mit ful­ly to a sit­u­a­tion, then if you must, accept a change to that sit­u­a­tion, and move for­ward with the future look­ing dif­fer­ent from what you expected.

This tru­ism was brought home to us late last week, in the form of one small fam­i­ly of kittens.

Com­ing home from a fab­u­lous­ly fun-filled day in New York, Avery and I went in to the kit­tens’ room to feed, water and clean up after them as usu­al.  Until we embarked on this nurs­ing-fam­i­ly fos­ter­ing sit­u­a­tion, we had no idea how much work was involved — the moth­er hav­ing to be fed con­stant­ly, their linens changed more times a day than you could imag­ine, clean­ing up after lit­tle crea­tures who can­not yet use a lit­ter­box.  Not that we mind­ed one bit; their love made it all worth­while.  Like a human baby, actu­al­ly (or four of them).

So we were not par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bled to find a quite messy lit­tle Mul­der (the runt of the lit­ter) and a trail of her mess­es on the floor.  “What have you been doing to your­self, lit­tle guy?” Avery won­dered as we cleaned up and dis­in­fect­ed.  We got her all put to rights, we thought, played with them all for awhile, and went to bed.

In the morn­ing I went to feed them, and to my shock and hor­ror, found Mul­der stretched out full-length (which was small­er than a stick of but­ter), not curled up asleep in the way kit­tens typ­i­cal­ly do.  I lift­ed her up and there was absolute­ly no response, just a dead almost-noth­ing weight.  She seemed to have lost half her size dur­ing the night.  I turned the limp form over in my hands to find her eyes closed and no dis­cern­able heartbeat.

“John!” I shout­ed, run­ning with the tiny thing into the kitchen.  I wrapped her in a dishtowel.

“Mul­der is dying, or maybe dead!  We have to get her to the vet!”

John ran to get Avery and we jumped into the car, me cradling the weight­less baby.  We sped down our wind­ing road, which seemed about six times as long as ever before, and through town, run­ning at least two red lights.  Luck­i­ly it is a very small town and the vet was close, as every­thing is.  We said noth­ing dur­ing the jour­ney except once when I felt I had to come clean, “I think Mul­der may be dead.”

We ran in the door of the vet and up to the recep­tion desk.  I said, “We have a dying kit­ten; it’s an emer­gency.”  A door opened and a slight young man beck­oned us in.  A burly, small man took Mul­der in his hands in the dish­tow­el and lay her on the table.

“This kit­ten is severe­ly hypo­glycemic and dehy­drat­ed.  I’ll take her in and give her some flu­ids and vit­a­mins.  I’ll do what I can, but I can’t promise you anything.”

“How could this hap­pen, lit­er­al­ly overnight?” I asked.

“You have to under­stand that in a crea­ture this small, you go to bed at maybe 11, get up at 7, those eight hours are very long.  Any­thing can happen.”

In shocked silence we stood inde­ci­sive­ly in the wait­ing room.  An elder­ly woman with a kind, lined face and a cat car­ri­er said, “She is in good hands.  Doc­tor Ross will do all he can.”  We left, and rode home again almost in silence.  I think we were all think­ing of the enor­mous respon­si­bil­i­ty of car­ing for such crea­tures, and feel­ing cer­tain that Mul­der would not have sur­vived in the wild.

We spent the next two hours in an agony of uncer­tain­ty.  Final­ly I called the vet.  The recep­tion­ist said, “The doc­tor is in a pro­ce­dure right now, but he’ll call you back in 15 min­utes.”  “Just tell me if the kit­ten is still alive.”  “Yes, she is still alive.”

Ten min­utes lat­er the phone rang.  “You can come get your kit­ten now,” the vet said calm­ly.  “It’s touch and go, and she’s not out of the woods yet, but she needs to nurse.  I’ll send a vit­a­min sup­ple­ment home with you.  At least she’s up and about walk­ing now.”

Unbe­liev­ably, this was true.  Mul­der was up and about!  Strug­gling to get out of the box we brought to car­ry her, in fact.  Thank God.

“There’s no charge for the vis­it,” the recep­tion­ist said.  “Just for the sup­ple­ment.”  I could feel tears come, at this kindness.

All through that day, then, and as it turned out, every two hours dur­ing the night, we fed her with dabs of a sug­ary vit­a­min sup­ple­ment which she was will­ing (Avery dis­cov­ered) to suck from the wet cor­ner of a t‑shirt.  I dripped water into her tiny mouth, her face lit­tle big­ger than a quar­ter coin.  All through the day, and night.  At about 3 a.m., Avery said exhaust­ed­ly, “Good rid­dance to this day.”

In an tense email exchange with the shel­ter all through the day and evening, we had dis­cussed the kit­tens’ gen­er­al health.  All four had devel­oped what looked like ring­worm (in our shel­ter-kit­ten-wis­dom, we could diag­nose this), and Dick­ens had tak­en to vom­it­ing.  Rip­ley’s eye remained stub­born­ly shut.  Ivy, the mum, looked resigned.  Final­ly Avery and I took the whole fam­i­ly back to nice Doc­tor Ross.  “This is a pay­ing vis­it,” John said firm­ly.  But after Doc­tor Ross had exam­ined them all, rehy­drat­ed the sick Dick­ens, tak­en Ivy’s tem­per­a­ture and giv­en us ring­worm med­ica­tion, there came the phrase again.  “No charge.”  Can you imag­ine the generosity?

The shel­ter asked for them back, first thing in the morn­ing.  “This sit­u­a­tion is too much for a vol­un­teer fos­ter fam­i­ly.”  We had to agree, reluctantly.

When John woke us ear­ly, Mul­der was amaz­ing­ly recov­ered.  For a thing weigh­ing less than a pound, life had cer­tain­ly turned on a dime for her.  We drove in near silence, again, to the shel­ter and climbed the out­door steps to the sun­ny, clean, qui­et med­ical clin­ic where the whole fam­i­ly sat in a sun­beam on the floor and the nice recep­tion­ist assured us that every­thing would be done to care for them all.  “It was real­ly nice of you to fos­ter them.  Ani­mals are ther­a­py, aren’t they?”  What a way to look at the enor­mous respon­si­bil­i­ty she had tak­en on, in that calm, pro­fes­sion­al room.  We left our beloveds behind.

Strange­ly after leav­ing them there, the three of us felt better.

“At least now, they’re in capa­ble med­ical hands,” we repeat­ed in var­i­ous ways.  “We did all we could.”

What would the world do with­out the kind­ness­es that so often hap­pen?  You hear a lot of noise in this world about cru­el­ty, care­less­ness, and out­right evil.  But I want you to know what sort of love and good­will sur­round­ed all of us, in those two days.

Mike and Lau­ren had us to din­ner the evening of Mul­der’s sick­ness.  “Just a quick evening, to get your mind off things.”  The evening spent in their tran­quil gar­den, eat­ing grilled mahi and corn and rhubarb crum­ble, watch­ing beau­ti­ful baby Abi­gail grow­ing by the minute, was absolute heav­en.  How love­ly to be looked after.

The day of the kit­ties’ depar­ture was very emp­ty, at first.  I scrubbed and ster­il­ized and dis­in­fect­ed the bath­room where we’d been keep­ing them, just to be busy.  John decid­ed to climb the laun­dry room roof to inves­ti­gate why the toi­let was flush­ing slow­ly.  David came to hold the lad­der.  After John’s har­row­ing climb up and down with a buck­et full of water, brav­ing his fear of heights, I ran in to flush.  No better.

David asked inno­cent­ly, “Did you try a plunger?”

Silence.

The plunger did the trick.  Some­times we for­get to try the sim­plest cure first.

Final­ly Avery and I decid­ed to spend the after­noon try­ing to get the quin­tes­sen­tial pho­to­graph of red pep­per soup.  Stop­ping at the farm stand for pep­pers, I real­ized I had very lit­tle cash.  “How many red pep­pers can I buy for $3.50?” I asked.  The young helper behind the counter stud­ied me.  “How many do you need?”  “Four.”  She put them on the scale and I watched the nee­dle go far too high.  “Whad­dya know?  $3.50 exact­ly,” she said with a wink.

The kind­ness of strangers.

Regi­na came by in the late after­noon to bring us some pho­tos that friends had tak­en of Red Gate Farm when they used it for a film shoot.  “It is so peace­ful here, is it not?” she asked in her lilt­ing Ger­man accent.  She sat down with Avery and me to look at our efforts of the after­noon.  We had final­ly achieved the per­fect red pep­per soup pho­to.  What a triumph!

Regi­na sat on with us, exclaim­ing over the deli­cious images, get­ting hun­gry for her own sup­per.  “Oh, I’ve always want­ed to try vichys­soise!” she said, look­ing at the love­ly pho­to.  “You can!” John laughed.  “There’s a batch in the fridge.”  And he sent some home with her to try.

The fol­low­ing day we made brown­ies to take to the vet and his love­ly staff, who asked after the kit­ten fam­i­ly and seemed pleased that they were at the clin­ic, and sor­ry for our itchy places (we don’t mind; a small price to pay for hav­ing had the kit­tens with us).  And when we got home, dear Judy appeared with a plate of sug­ar cook­ies stud­ded with laven­der leaves, a recu­per­a­tive gift for Avery and her bout with Lyme dis­ease (which seems a life­time ago).  “I meant to make them ear­li­er, when you were still feel­ing bad, but where has the sum­mer gone?”  The lit­tle cloth cov­er­ing the cook­ies sums up Judy perfectly.

Sat­ur­day dawned fair and cool and sun­ny, so we decid­ed it was time for an occa­sion, to divert us from our kit­ten­less house­hold.  What bet­ter than a lob­ster feast?  Anne, David and Kate trooped across the road to join us for our messy, glo­ri­ous­ly deli­cious dinner.

To go with the lob­sters we had stuffed zuc­chi­ni, an unex­pect­ed­ly savory and cel­e­bra­to­ry lit­tle side dish.

Stuffed Courgettes/Zucchini

(serves 4)

 

4 round courgettes

1 pork sausage

1 tbsp butter

1 red pep­per, minced

1 shal­lot, minced

4 mush­rooms, minced

4 tbsps Boursin or oth­er her­by soft cheese

3 tbsps breadcrumbs

salt to taste

olive oil to drizzle

Cut the tops off the cour­gettes and reserve them.  Scoop out the seedy insides of the cour­gettes and discard.

Mince the tops, and melt the but­ter in a saucepan.  Saute the minced tops and all the oth­er veg­eta­bles.  Mix in a bowl with the cheese, bread­crumbs and salt to taste.

Spoon the mix­ture into the cour­gettes and place in a bak­ing dish.  Driz­zle with olive oil and bake at 425F/220C for 30 minutes.

******

We sat late over the deli­cious rasp­ber­ry sor­bet Anne had brought, and Judy’s laven­der cook­ies, dis­cussing the role of the British monar­chy, John’s past polit­i­cal adven­tures as a Rea­gan­ite young­ster, Avery’s hopes for her exam results this week.  The can­dles flick­ered out and we were hap­py.  We had begun with one sort of week, had suf­fered the trau­mas that come when you open up your life to needy lit­tle crea­tures, had been lift­ed up by the peo­ple we hold dear, and had come out on the oth­er side, ready to start a new week.  Who knows what this one will bring.