Archive for September, 2008

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SNL had Sarah Palin on last night. (If you’re confused, it’s actually, actress Tina Fey.)

There’s a huge manhunt going on up in the Bremers’ area for a kidnapping suspect. Duncan is away this weekend and asked me to stay with Michele. They got a reverse 911 call Thursday night urging them to lock their doors and not answer the door. They still haven’t caught the guy.

Last night we went down to the apple tree in the bank parking lot with Bob and Melissa and their kids and picked apples. Bob climbed up in the tree and shook each branch so that the fully loaded tree was fully stripped by the time we left! We probably had six bushels. Michele and I came back to the house. Bob walked around the dark house with us, and we made sure no one had broken in.

Then Michele and I set to work with the juicer juicing the apples. We got about a gallon of juice last night and made a sizable dent in the heaping laundry baskets of apples. Before we went to bed, we turned out all the lights, including the light in the chicken coop, figuring that would make us less of a target.

We woke up this morning at 7:30 when Vance Terry called. He had borrowed Gracie and Daisy as pack animals to go hunting. I answered the phone, and he said, “It’s not an emergency, but can I talk to Michele?”

He told her Daisy the donkey had given birth at his house, and what should he do now?

We’re going to go over see the little in a bit!

Tamar was still alive yesterday but a lot worse than on Friday when I’d last seen her. She would try to roll her head toward me and attempt to mew at me several times, but all that would come out was a hoarse sigh. I gave her some water, and she was too weak to fight. She swallowed it and seemed content with it. Other times I stroked her head. She still loved being stroked. I only stroked her head so I wouldn’t hurt her broken back. I told her I was sorry I didn’t know what she wanted, though she obviously wanted something from me.

She rolled over a couple times. It was cold yesterday, so I put her in a sunbeam. When the sun went behind a cloud, I brought her over by my desk and covered her with a towel to keep her warm. Her labored breathing would move the towel up and down.

This morning the towel was in the same position I’d left it but still. I asked Duncan what I should do with her. Usually, dead cats get thrown on the other side of fence by the railroad tracks. “I think she deserves a proper burial,” he said. Maybe he figured I needed a proper burial. So I carried the box and a shovel out to the hollow and found a gopher hole the dogs had started digging up. The ground was soft and sandy, and I had a hole in no time. I positioned her body in, told her I was glad she was out of pain, and turned my head and filled the hole back in with the dirt I had removed plus some more from a pile outside another nearby gopher hole. Then I put a piece of sandstone that had fallen down the cliff on top. That’s why we have gravestones, I thought, to make it harder to dig up a grave. Then I mended the fence that crosses the stream with the multitool I keep in my back pocket and carried the shovel and box of towels and rags back up to the house.

The good thing about kittens is that you don’t have to dig a very big hole when they die.