DAYS TWO AND THREE WITH SOPHIA THE CAT

Sophia meditating

 

Day two with Sophia, we spent the whole day together. I held her, talked to her, played cat games with her, gave her all my attention into the night. Took her to bed with me, I like a cat to sleep on the bed, and she slept on my belly some, on my side some. She has a stillness about her that makes her easy to be with. She doesn't take much interest in playing with toys. They are only momentarily interesting to her. I remember the time I threw a ball for my dog Aster when she was young. She watched it sail through the air. Looked back at me like, What? I loved that in her and never played the fetch game again. I was so impressed with her for not chasing the ball automatically, I chose not to train the indifference out of her. It's the same with Sophia. She doesn't want to play with toys, ok. I don't mind. It impresses me about her, makes me think I've got a good cat. Not that I think playing with toys is dumb, because it's not, but kittens seem to automatically take to toys. One that does not is kind of unusual for a cat. Or seems so.

 

I like the white around he eyes

 

I talked to her much of the day, using her name often, looking for a brief song around her name. At this moment she is napping on my left forearm. Now she is on the desk top between the keyboard and the edge of the desk. I've made a space wide enough for her to walk on and lie down on. Training her to stay off the keyboard gently. I just guide her away with my hand. She is attracted to the movement on the monitor. Training her to look at it from her space on the desk top between my forearms. I want her to be with me and close to me while I write at the keyboard. To keep her away would make her into a nuisance. She wants to be here, I like her being here. She will learn about the keyboard. Today she is much better about it than yesterday. And tomorrow she will be better than today. She is now on my left forearm again, in a Sphinx pose with eyes closed. I'm teaching her that she can do anything on the desktop she wants, except walk on the keyboard. I'm clearing the desktop to make a hangout area for her. Her stillness makes it possible to have her close while I'm at the keyboard.

another view of Sophia's face

 

I sit to read, she automatically curls up in my lap, does not climb onto the book, does not have to be on the book. For her, the book is a shade from the lamp's direct light. She doesn't plead for attention, just curls up for a nap. The first time I saw her, in the small cage that made an open cat carrier, on the walkway in front of Halsey Drug with a Free Kittens sign, the other two appealed for my attention when I stopped to take a look. This one, the one with yellow eyes, just looked at me making no appeal. One other of the kittens looked just like Sophia with gray eyes. I was drawn to Sophia for her yellow eyes. Caterpillar's eyes were yellow. The kitten's way of not appealing to me and the yellow eyes put my attention directly on her. And she never left my mind. I stayed home from going to see the race today. This is valuable time with Sophia. We're getting to know each other. I remind self Sophia has only been in this body two months. Everything is brand new to her. She pays attention, quick to learn.

going someplace

I am able to raise Sophia with knowledge learned from other cats before her. First, foremost, she is conscious. That's where we start. I know she feels, thinks, has feelings, emotions, and is in a time of hyper-learning, esp now in a new world with a new giant. I'm glad she was with mama cat and kittens unto weaning. She's learned what mama had to teach her and what kittens learn from each other. When Caterpillar, Tapo and Tar Baby were kittens, one would learn something first, then the others would get it. I saw growing up with other kittens teaching each other what they learn, they learn quite a lot faster than one alone.  I'm glad Sophia has had a complete kitten experience. She's learned what a cat needs to know about being a cat. Now it is her time to learn how to be center of attention for a giant with a furry face. Yesterday we played much of the time. Today she napped on me while I read, naps on my arm while I write. Yesterday was getting-to-know-you day. Today, we are glad to be together, are settling into each other. I feel like I'm an old Hindu who married a two month old bride, a marriage arranged by horoscope. What fun  it would be to drive to Rowan County, Kentucky, and ask for a marriage license for self with a two month old cat. I'll check Sophia's horoscope birth chart soon. I can see already she will be a good mouser.

baby with first toy

 

 

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CATERPILLAR NURTURER

 

I chose to leave the house today to go to neighbor's house and do laundry. It was quiet, trees and sky in the windows, a good place to be still and read. Have begun Cormac McCarthy's novel, Suttree, which takes place in Knoxville, Tennessee, enchanted by every sentence. My first McCarthy read. Have seen three or four movies from his stories. He tells such a twisted story I hesitate to go there. Jumped in and enjoy his writing so much, it's the read I've been looking for and didn't know it. Reading mostly information books lately. It's time for a good fiction read by a writer whose prose, itself, pulls me through the story. A relaxing time, stepping outside self for a few hours in friends' house, in Cormac McCarthy's mind. Return home and want to lie down on the bed to cry and tell Caterpillar I miss her, but another part of mind questioned the sense of letting ego indulge itself overmuch in  sorrow. No need to wallow in it. I'd already done that. She's in the front of my mind every minute, remembering her personality, moments from when she was a kitten, remembering the first time I saw her, newborn and held her in my hand for a moment with mama cat's permission. Three kittens, Caterpillar, Tar Baby and Tapo. I fell in love with them that moment, holding them, one at a time.

 

 

 

Wondering what I was going to do with three more cats. It was Mother's Day, 1997. They were born in what is now the donkey den, in a big cardboard box with a thick nest of hay in the bottom for insulation, a hole cut in the side for mama cat, Celina, to come and go. I opened the top and held the babies every day, wanting my hands to be familiar to them as mama cat from birth. Celina was a calico that had been through a blender, irregular patches of orange, black and white. She came to me feral in her first winter. We had freezing rain that broke trees everywhere and left a coat of two inches of ice on the ground for two weeks. I heard her crying to me from under the bathroom. I realized right away it was a desperate cat. I carried a bowl of cat food and one of water for her, walking on ice all the way. Every day I took her fresh water to replace the water that froze in the night. She would not let me see her for a few weeks. I knelt at the opening and talked to her, telling her she's welcome here, she need never be hungry again. It was a month before she let me touch her and weeks before I could hold her. She'd let me hold her maybe ten seconds, then she had to be on her feet. She'd never been off her feet before.

 

 

 

One day I picked up Celina and felt little lumps in her belly. Babies. I fixed a place for her inside the woodshed where I kept wood scraps accumulated over years, someday-I'm-gonna items. I secured the place so varmints could not get in during the night. It was weeks after she was in her new house that she let me see her. I'd open the door and she'd run to a hiding place. I let her be that way. She caught on that I was there to feed her and give her water, provide shelter, not to control her in any way. She relaxed toward me gradually, even became friends with Aster the dog. We would go out to see her in the morning and she would rub on Aster's legs. She let me pet her. I talked to her, kept her informed she has a safe place here with plenty of food. No worries. I can still see the morning I opened the door and she stepped out of her nesting box trim in the waist. She was a mama. She was happy. I chose not to bother her with fear of the giant snatching her newborns, deciding to wait til next day to hold them, let them be hers without interference in her first hours with them. I opened the top of the nest box to have a look and closed it back. I already knew I would not part with these cats. They were my babies, they would have good lives, I would see to it. I could not turn over any of my babies to anyone, fear of the unknown regarding their fates.

 

 

The morning the kittens' eyes opened, two weeks old, Celina ran under a passing car. That's it, cat shit. The differential housing popped her head. It was fast. Leaving me with mama cat to bury and kittens to raise as their mother. For this, I took them as gifts from goddess. I put them in a paper grocery store bag and drove them to the vet's office. I needed instruction and kitten formula to feed them. Vet looked them over, gave them drops for ear mites. He told me they would not live. I already knew they would, though didn't say anything, not wanting to jinx my intention. He did not know that I knew they need mother love as much as the physical nourishment. I turned on mother love in myself while burying Celina. I promised her the babies would have good lives here with me, they would be loved all their lives. Tapo and Tar Baby both left the body at twelve years old. I brought the kittens in the house, set them up a corner. I held them, fed them, watched them, talked to them, named them. They were quick to learn their names and equally quick learning each other's names. Caterpillar was the nurturer, the kitten that keeps the other kittens clean when mama cat has been taken away. This was her title all through her life, the nurturer. She liked it when I called her Caterpillar nurturer. She also liked Caterpillar lioness. A kitten, she looked like a Japanese watercolor of a fluffy kitten. I fell in love with my babies, they fell in love with me, and they lived. Now, Caterpillar turned into a butterfly and flew away on the wind.

 

 

photos by tj worthington

 

 

 

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GROWING OLD WITH CATERPILLAR

 

caterpillar

 

 

A low thunder rumbles in the distance. Cat meows for my attention. Katydids and tree frogs sing the music of the twinkling stars in the bowl of night. The rain has begun, a light sprinkle. Late August. I feel the first chill of autumn in the middle of August, consistently on the fifteenth or sixteenth. This year it was the fifteenth, a night when the temperature drops into the low sixties. I put on a sweatshirt. It's slightly too chilly for short sleeves and not quite enough for long sleeves. I'd rather arms be warm than cold. Must rise early in the morning, which means get to sleep at a reasonable hour tonight, set the alarm and see if sleep will o'ertake consciousness.  Sleep usually eludes when I have to get up and go someplace in the morning. I don't want to wake up late, so I have a hard time letting go of consciousness, apprehensive that I may not hear the alarm, the alarm may not go off. The way it works out, if I have to be up by six, sleep occurs around 5. Doesn't mean it has to be this time. Something has recently changed in my sleeping.

 

 

Caterpillar has taken to sleeping with me and I like it. Since the fur has been shaved from her skin, she freezes at night. I took her to bed one night and she was snug, warm and happy. Slept all night without moving. She does not move in the night. I'm the one that sometimes crushes her by rolling over on top of her unconscious.  She doesn't even squawk. I wake up right away, the unconscious knows the lump in the bed is cat. I jump awake, move, apologize. Cat doesn't mind. Or, anyway, never lets on. She is plenty warm all night under the covers, wakes in the morning a renewed cat. She did not want to get up this morning when I did, so I let her stay under the covers. Some hours later I went to take a nap. She was still sleeping. I woke her and slowly lifted the cover so she could see. First thing she saw was time of day by the slant of the sunlight in the window, mid afternoon. She did a cat double-take. Her eyes were quickly alert. I could see her thinking, It's late. I've slept too long. I have things to do. And she wanted up right now. She went to the water bowl and drank like a camel, to her food bowl where I'd just put down fresh food, and out the door with determined urgency. She'd missed her morning sunning place and the early afternoon sunning place. She'd missed half a day of sun.

 

caterpillar before sheering

 

I first took Caterpillar under the covers to keep her shaven hide warm in the night. It has been a couple weeks and we're both comfortable with it. She likes sleeping next to her human and she likes the warmth under the cover. She likes the absence of light. She's eighteen now, a crone, and a bit more needing attention than ever before. She has always liked a daily assurance from her human that he's happy to have her here, that she belongs here, this is her home. She's outlived her siblings and the dog, she's loved by her human the same today as every day of her life. She needs to be held more now. Upon request, I'll pick her up and hold her a few minutes, she'll snuggle up against me like a baby and purr. I put her down and she goes outside ready to get on with the next part of the day. I don't know where she goes during the day, but do know she has places she likes at different times of day for the sun. I only know where she is when I find her by chance while I'm doing something besides looking for her. She has places where she likes to be still, watch the birds, the chipmunks, the squirrels. She doesn't catch them and eat them anymore. She likes to watch. She has become an observer in her advanced years.

 

 

Caterpillar has never been one to sleep on the bed with me. The other cats, Tar Baby and Tapo, slept on the bed nearly all the time. I like cats on the bed. A morning when Caterpillar was a year old or less, she was sleeping on the bed at my feet. Cats learned right away stay away from my feet in the night. Caterpillar had not slept on the bed enough to have learned yet about the feet. This one particular morning, in a dream I was startled by something that grabbed hold of my ankle, something like a small octopus. Dreaming, I tried to shake loose whatever creature it was. I woke simultaneously to see my leg kick to throw off the threatening unknown. It was Caterpillar lying across my ankle. I saw her fly through the air backwards, eyes big as sunflowers, hit the wall with her back about three feet above the floor, and fall to the floor. Caterpillar flying backwards is an image tattooed on my mind. Of course, I jumped out of the bed and picked her up to apologize. She didn't care to hear it. She wanted down. I put her down and she was out the door. I suspect she was so rattled she needed time to pull herself back together. Never jumped on the bed again. We're old now together and value each other more than ever. We communicate like never before. I feel like the distances of consciousness between us have narrowed considerably over the years since Tapo and TarBaby left us. I feel like I'm learning to understand Caterpillar. Love is the WiFi that makes understanding possible both directions at once.

caterpillar one year old

by tj worthington 1998

 

 

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MOTHER LOVE

the wildwood flowers

After catching on that Caterpillar was miserable from relentless cold, I took her into the bed with me last night under the covers, a bit hesitant about fleas, but told self Caterpillar is worth more to me than a few flea bites. I found a way to be sure she did not fall off the bed while I was sleeping. We both slept soundly. No flea bites. She was refreshed in the morning when I put her on the floor. She went about her day in comfort. She has several sunning beds. I felt satisfied I'd found the problem and took care of it seeing her walk on her toes again. I meant it when I said I fell in love with Caterpillar all over again. I feel so much love for her today and yesterday my heart glows. I've loved her since birth, known her every day of her life. I am her mother. Her biological mother was a darling tortoise shell small cat who was feral and took up under my house the winter of 96-97 after a storm of two inches of ice on the ground for two weeks, creeks iced over, broken trees everywhere. She was desperate. I heard her crying under the house. Took her a bowl of water and some catfood every day. She would not let me see her for a month. She came into view eventually after some confidence I wasn't here to hurt her, but to help her. 

black eyed susans

Gradually, I touched her, went slowly with her, she was so frightened and so humble. Also, the cat living here at the time, Peck, did not like having another cat in her territory. Aster the black dog was with me when I took food to the cat. She became acquainted with dog along with me. There came a time she let me hold her. She came to like our visits. One day, picking her up I felt little lumps in her belly. Kittens. I thought, Oh no, more cats. I had a shed that once held chickens my first ten years living here, a flock of half a dozen banty hens and a rooster. I was using it for a shed to keep found wood and leftover wood from projects dry out of the weather. Found a cardboard box from a store in town, cut a hole in it, put hay in it and sat it in the shed with the top where I could open and close it to see and reach inside. She brought into my world three kittens, two black, one gray with black stripes. I went to see them every day, took mama cat fresh water and catfood. Every day I held the kittens wanting them accustomed to the human touch from birth, wanting mama to learn to trust me with the babies. The day their eyes opened, two weeks old, mama cat, Celina, ran under a passing car in a domino-effect chain of events so complex it eliminated blame. 

queen anne's lace

I went to the shed with Aster that morning like every morning. Celina was rubbing on Aster's legs by then. Mother's day morning I opened the door and Celina was gone. I thought I had the shed tight enough nothing could get in or out. I went looking for her. Next farm neighbor's car went down the road. Aster, knowing the car, thinking it might stop, she took off running toward the place where I park the car to meet him. I saw Celina sitting beside the road next to my car. She saw Aster running at her full speed, Aster not even aware of her. Fear startled her, she darted across the road under the car between front and back tires. She would have made it, but the differential smacked her head. My only comfort, it was fast. I had an adorable cat to bury and three kittens I didn't know what to do with. Mama cat in her final resting place, I put the kittens in a paper grocery bag and carried them to the vet. I knew I needed kitten formula only available there, and asked for tips on how to take care of them. They gave me good instruction. Vet told me my babies would not live. I felt that Southern thing, not wanting to sound like I knew more than he did about his field, chose not to say what I knew, they will live. I intended it. The vet didn't know I knew they needed mother love as much as food to make it. I could do that. 

queen anne's lace

I fixed a corner for them in the house and gave them loving attention all day, holding them, feeding them, talking to them, singing to them, watching them play. They slept most of the time, piled on top of each other. I opened my heart and fell in love with them for their survival, and wanted to, because I love my pets. Also knew I could never let any of them go to an uncertain future. As long as they lived with me, they were safe. I told the kittens I loved them every day, every time I held and spoke to them. This applied all their lives. They were so charming I couldn't help but fall in love. Even in the first weeks, each one's complete personality was there. They were uniquely individual and not the least bit alike. The first day Caterpillar walked, she hobbled over the floor like a gray and black striped furry caterpillar. She was comical. Next was Tadpole for her black wiggly nature. There came a time she let me know she wanted another name, she didn't like Tadpole. It wasn't her. I asked her about Tapo, pronounced like taco, and she liked it. Then there was TarBaby. We were already stuck together for life. And I love Sade's song, Tar Baby. Peck hated the kittens, hissed at them every time she saw them. She left home when they were a year old. I did not withdraw attention or love from her. She just went away. TarBaby and Tapo both left the body age 12, not far apart. My feeling was Tapo loved TarBaby so much she wanted to be with him. It tore me up losing them. Lost Aster age 12. I'm left with Caterpillar, a beautiful Maine Coon with wide awake eyes, age 18. I cling to her, the last of my babies, and love her with all my heart, keep her spirit in the body with mother love. 

photos by tj worthington

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THE KITTENS AND THE DOG

hans silvester

Going back in my mind yesterday telling Caterpillar's origin, Tapo stays with me. She's been on my mind all day. She left the body soon after Tar Baby by a few months. Tar Baby was Tapo's friend. She loved Tar Baby. He loved her too. Tapo did not like Caterpillar, and I felt like she left the body after Tar Baby was gone to get away from Caterpillar. At about the time of puberty, Caterpillar took a stand-offish attitude toward Tapo and Tar Baby. She intimidated them, always threatening to fight if one came too close to her. She attacked Tapo and cornered her. I tried to stop her, but couldn't change her attitude toward Tapo. I would call her name when she'd corner Tapo, and Caterpillar would start backing up. I called her off of Tapo numerous times. Caterpillar stayed to herself after they differentiated. At first they were like one soul with three bodies and gradually differentiated into their unique personalities. In her youth, Tapo would walk around on the small branches of trees. I saw her one day climb the dogwood near the house. She walked out onto a small limb as far as she could go and it hold her. She sat down in the fork of two small limbs and swung up and down. When she'd had her fun, she stood up, a four-legged tightrope walker, and walked the branch back to the trunk. 

hans silvester

Tar Baby was good in trees, too. There was a time I took them with me when I went into the woods to sit on a rock for a few hours and watch the world around me breathe. The place I went to was as far as they would go into the forest where the wild things are looking for cats to eat. They knew what lived in these woods better than I did. I was watching Tar Baby this one day climb a tree on one side of the creek, and walk on the longest branch in the tree that leaned over the creek. He walked out to the end of the branch as far as it would hold him, and leaped onto a branch of a tree leaning over he creek from the other side where I was sitting. He walked to the tree trunk, walked down the trunk backwards, and walked over to where I was sitting. I've seen him jump across the creek from standing still, spring into the air, legs hanging down relaxed, and land on the other side. It was quite a thing to behold. Tar Baby would climb a tree to the very tip top, as close as he could get and it hold. Oh how I miss my babies. Tar Baby wanted to be one of the big guys. He wanted to be with me and Aster. He identified more with us than with Tapo and Caterpillar. He had an advanced mind for a cat. He wanted me and Aster to see that he was one of us. Aster didn't buy it. Tar Baby was, after all, a cat. 

hans silvester

I went walking up the road with Aster one day and Tar Baby wanted to go with us. He was young, had never been far from the house. His nerves overtook him when the house went out of sight. He got so nervous, he got a little heady. Aster was walking beside me, not by command, but by her preference at that moment. Tar Baby walked out ahead of us, feeling like he was doing something big. I could see his nervous jitters. At a distance of maybe thirty to forty feet, he looked back at us with curiosity. It was like he'd never seen us small before. He looked at Aster and I saw the spark in his eye that said, I'm gonna do it. He came galloping straight at Aster with his back about half up. He was going to pounce on the dog. Now that Tar Baby was one of the big guys, it's ok to pounce on the dog and play. Aster stood still with her head hanging down and her eyes on Tar Baby's eyes. Tar Baby saw Aster's eyes and he hit the brakes. All four legs extended all the way, toes and claws grasping the gravel road for some grip, sliding sideways straight at Big Growler, eyes about to pop out of his head. Aster didn't move. Tar Baby's momentum came to rest inches from Aster's face. The split-second he stopped, he leaped from the center of the road to the tall grass at the side in a single move, flew up the bank and under the barbed wire fence. He walked with us the other side of the fence all the way home. 

hans silvester

The cats came to me after I'd been here twenty years. All those years I'd seen from time to time what I called the spirit cat. I would see it dart out of sight just as I looked. Never got a good look at it until one day I walked in the door after being gone two weeks. The spirit cat was standing in the middle of the floor. Startled, it paused for half a second and ran to a corner behind the corner table. I saw it plain as a cat in a body, a gray shadow. It darted when it ran and ran with tail straight up with a hook at the end. The kittens were born and grew up. I noticed Tapo was the same size and shape as the spirit cat, ran in short bursts of speed, darting, and her tail straight up with a hook at the end. Tapo was born ravenous. She ate until she couldn't eat any more, so glad to have a body. As she grew up she grew out, too. She became a bit chubby, which I suspected had a lot to do with keeping her weight up to Caterpillar's to help her wrestle Caterpillar. I was sitting on the chair one day with Tapo, talking to her. She was depressed over Caterpillar bullying her. I told her, when Caterpillar jumps on you, roll over on your back and rip her guts out with your back claws. She'll stop it. Not ten minutes later, Tapo was on the floor and Caterpillar walked in. She looked hard at Tapo and pounced on her. Tapo rolled onto her back, raked Caterpillar's belly with her claws, and Caterpillar jumped off her and was gone. She only did it a couple of times. My feeling was that she didn't want to hurt Caterpillar, didn't want to fight her. Tapo wanted to be left in peace. I never saw the spirit cat again after Tapo was born. I was grateful the spirit cat was able to have a body delivered to it and set it back into the rhythm of births and deaths. No more stuck without a body. And grateful I had a chance to know my spirit companion of so many years.
    

hans silvester himself

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CATERPILLAR AND HER FAMILY

caterpillar

It's been a lazy day, slept about all day after a good sleep all night. Awake, I didn't want to do anything.but scroll facebook for the distraction of it. Another form of tv full of commercials. A brief interview with Lou Reed turned up. Videos of cats are always funny. They make me want a young cat in the house again. For real companionship, Caterpillar is the only cat I want. She'll be eighteen on Mother's Day. She sleeps much of the time. We have a deep bond. She was born here to a feral cat who took up under the house in hard winter when two inches of ice were on the ground for two weeks. I heard her crying under the house. She would not let me see her. I took water and catfood to her daily. The water froze in the night. I talked to her while she hid. She came out and let me see her after a month. Gradually, she let me touch her. She was a calico after a tumble in a blender. I named her Celina for a tango dancer in a Julio Cortazar story, The Gates of Heaven. After some weeks with Celina, I was able to pick her up for a short time. One day I noticed her belly felt like something was in there. I made a nest for her, a cardboard box with hay in the bottom, inside what had once been a chicken shed, used for storing wood out of the weather. Her babies were born on Mother's Day. Dog Aster became friends with Celina. Cat rubbed on Aster's legs. The cat who lived here at the time, Peck, hated having Celina in her territory, fought her every time she found her outside the shed. One morning when I went out to give her fresh water and catfood, she was thin again. I opened the top of the box and saw three tiny blind kittens, two black, one gray. Next morning I picked each one up and looked at it closely. 

tapo

At two weeks old, their eyes opened. That morning I went out to see Celina and the babies. She was not in. I did not know the shed had an escape hole for the cat. Obviously it did. I headed back for the house. Aster was with me. A neighbor's car went down the road. Aster, recognizing the car, took off running to meet him where I park the car. Aster started running and I saw next to my car, Celina sitting. She saw Aster running toward her full blast and darted across the road, under the passing car. Another cat to bury. It was such of string of events, like falling dominoes, no one of the moments in the chain of events was to blame. It was a matter of 1-2-3-dead cat. She left me with her babies two weeks old. I gathered them into a paper grocery bag and carried them to the vet to ask for advice and to buy some kitten formula. Vet told me they would not live. I didn't refute him, but I knew they would live. I knew they needed mother's love as much as her milk to live on. I switched on Mother and became their mother. I fixed a place in a corner with two boards standing on edge for barrier and kept paper and food inside for them. I spent a lot of time holding them and talking to them. Caterpillar was named first. Her first day walking, she was a furry gray with black stripes and long curving white hair in her ears. She looked like a Japanese ink drawing of a kitten. She hunched and stretched like a caterpillar walking and looked like a furry caterpillar. I felt a special affection for Tar Baby, next to be named. I remembered Tar Baby from Uncle Remus, he'll stick to me, and Sade's beautiful song about a mixed-race child. Tapo, also black, I named Tadpole for being so wiggly. After some weeks of being called Tadpole, Tapo let me know in some subtle way that she didn't like her name, it wasn't her. I didn't want to change it too much, and shortened it to Tapo. It has a different ring to it, a higher vibration. She liked Tapo, pronounced like taco. 

caterpillar

Feeding them by bottle was wild time. I would be feeding one and the other two would climb up my pant legs. Tapo and Caterpillar were ravenous. They drank every time in full fervor until they passed out. Tar Baby stayed out of the melee and waited his turn. Early on, Tapo had me feeding her twice, thinking she was Tar Baby the second time. One day I saw him wobbly and weak, realized he was starving. I then fed Caterpillar first so I'd know when I put one down, which was which. My mother love fell in love with my babies. I remember being surprised at how soon they learned their own names and the names of the others. Aster had one rule with the kittens: stay off the dog. One of their early games was to crawl toward the dog and make the dog growl. Dog would growl and the kitten would shrink back to the others. They'd been walking a bit, had not yet discovered running. Tar Baby, for the first time, wandered into the kitchen out of sight of the others. He saw Aster from a distance for the first time. Evidently, she was smaller than he'd ever seen her. I saw the spark in his eyes when he said, "I'm gonna do it." He ran at dog, took a flying squirrel leap and landed on Aster's rump, sleeping on her bed. Quicker than thought, Aster was on her feet, turned around and had her open mouth completely over Tar Baby, him sitting inside dog's mouth, dog growling like a bear. Aster raised her head and revealed Tar Baby sitting there frozen stiff, unable even to shudder. The kittens on the floor froze in place. Gradually, Tar Baby crept slowly to the edge of Aster's bed and to the floor. The three kittens in a trance crawled to the center of the floor, piled on top of each other in a ball of three kittens and fell asleep. 

caterpillar

Peck, the cat who lived here, hated having Celina's kittens in her house. Every time she passed them, she'd make a face and hiss. I tried talking with her, explaining they are not here to take her place, they need a home, they're babies, they came to us for care. It was the same as talking to a rock. The kittens learned to stay away from her at the start. I called her Aunt Peck. Eventually, the kittens would hide when they saw her and jump out in front of her on the way to the water bowl. She'd hiss, the kittens would laugh. Their game became making Aunt Peck hiss. I told Peck they are growing up and they'll be her friends if she's nice to them while they're little. She wouldn't have it. The kittens grew a little more and the game turned into pounce on Aunt Peck. She really hated that game. She'd squirm out from under them and hiss. They laughed like crazy. Tar Baby, the bravest of them, found his fun in stepping up beside her and laying a front leg across her back, a half-pounce. She'd twist out from under him and hiss. He and the the other kittens laughed. I talked to Peck, reminded her the kittens are growing up, she'd do well to be nice to them or they'll grow up not liking her. She didn't want them to like her. My love for Peck did not diminish. I showed her more affection when she was around than the kittens. It didn't matter. She saw I had fallen in love with the kittens, unacceptable. She left when they were a year old. She'd had enough of them. I never saw her again, though I felt a communication when she died. She left when she was 9. Would have been 14 when the feeling came to me she'd died. She was a darling blond cat with white tips on her hair. She loved Aster. Aster mothered her when she was a tiny kitten. I couldn't let any of my babies go. Could not tolerate the idea that somebody might mistreat one and give it a miserable life. I couldn't take that chance. I knew they would be safe with me. Caterpillar is the only one left. In her I have all of them.
    

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