August 7, 2012

• WARNING:  This entry today may be very disturbing to you.  Read at your own risk.
  There are some things in life that are just really hard to understand and today we had one of those things.  It started out really wonderful, breakfast with my friend Paula at the Bistro.  Driving  by myself somewhere since June 25. Having  the energy to wash the van, and then…… I came home.  I noticed Doyle was gone, (he had gone on an errand.)  The first thing I did was head to the laundry room to change the laundry and as always when I walk by the closet I looked in to say something to the kittens.  But what was this?  There was only one kitten in the closet and Pippen was wandering around the laundry room looking rather dazed.  The back door was cracked open as always (as Pippen is  an indoor/outdoor cat).  My first thought was that Pippen had moved the kittens outside.  I had noticed when I left this morning that the kittens were trying to get out of their little contained space in the closet this morning.  I planned on moving them or doing something with them when I got home from breakfast, but now it looked like Pippen had beat me to it.  Out the back door I went calling the kittens and keeping my ears open to hear their cries.  I noticed Sia acting strange over by the daisies and the garage door and as I looked what I saw  horrified me!  Out of her mouth hung a kitten and looking closer I realized the kitten was dead, actually sliced open and his little intestines hanging out.  Enraged, I yelled at Sia, who of course dropped the kitten (Sia was trying to bury the kitten), and crying and running around I tried to find evidence of the other kittens.  I was sure Sia had killed the other ones (even though I KNEW Sia loves babies of all kinds).  I found no kittens and when Doyle came home a few minutes later, he found no kittens either.  But as I was talking to Doyle and we were trying to piece together what might have happened, I recalled seeing a nasty, magpie on the deck and it clicked.  I told Doyle that I thought Pippen decided to move the babies, got them on the deck one by one and being noisy, whiny little kittens, they attracted the attention of the magpies.  (We have tons of magpies that live in our huge cottonwood tree in the back yard.) These kittens were  only 3 1/2 weeks old and there were six of them, so they were quite small (although very healthy and putting on weight quickly).  Doyle didn’t believe magpies would do such a thing, but I told him I was going to “google it” and in I went.  Sure enough in about 5 seconds I had my answer.  Magpies will murder baby kittens!  And Sia, who HATES magpies as much as any of us was just trying to take the kitten and bury it, (she thank goodness was not the murderer!)  So, we have one baby left.   Poor baby has cried most of the day crawling around his little home looking for a sibling to lay on and Pippen has WAY too much milk for one little kitten.  Both of them are acting dazed and upset.  I can only hope that they will adjust qucikly.  Poor Jonathan was over today and wanted to know what happened to them.  We tried to explain they died, but of course did not go into the gory details.  When Beth came over she reminded me that “nature is cruel.”  It can be indeed, and it always amazes me that people that don’t live close to nature or animals think it is always so beautiful.  Nope.  Nature can be cruel.  There was nothing beautiful about what happened while we were gone on our back deck. 

  • 9:52 pm
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