Posts by Jonah

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.

date Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 9:49 PM
subject RE: Trash at Foothills Swim & Racquet Club

Thank you for your e-mail this afternoon. I would like to apologize to
you concerning this issue of trash accumulation near your property.
After reading your concerns my wife and I went down to the club to take
a look and picked up a trash bag full of tennis cups and other trash.
It seems that area of our property has been neglected by our guards and
club members. We also live in the neighborhood and can appreciate your
concern. I can promise you that changes will be made. I have talked
with our club president and let him know that the split rail fence in
that area needs to be repaired and an all membership email sent out
encouraging members to do their part in keeping the area in and around
the club clean. We are a seasonal facility, so the pool is not open
from Labor Day through Memorial Day. This means there will be less
activity at the club, but it also means that there will not be employees
to help keep the club clean. We will make a strong effort with our
membership to police this problem throughout the winter and continue
this effort during operating hours.

Continuing a positive relationship with our surrounding neighbors is
very important to me and the Foothills Swim and Racquet Club Board of
Directors. I appreciate your comments and encourage you to call me at
any time if you have concerns about our club.

Thank you for sincere comments.

Kent Christy
Foothills Swim & Racquet Club
kentchristy@personalemail
(home)
(cell)

Poor kitten.

Tamar was doing pretty well. The dogs were leaving her alone. She’d turned from a feral, spitting, hissing thing we’d brought home from Pueblo to someone who loved everyone.

But especially me.

She would come when I called her.

Here’s a picture of her when Ben and Amanda came to visit. “Come over here!” I said, and she meowed and came running, having to navigate the rim of the little sheep pen to get to me. I rewarded her with some stroking and then handed her to Amanda. As you can see, Tamar is a little unsure about being held by someone she didn’t know but willing to go along with it. A couple weeks before, she’d spent most of her time being held by Eddy, who is two. Eddy carried her around the house calling her his “pwincess.” She would yowl but her claws never came out.

A week ago Kitty, the Blue Heeler, decided to play catch with Tamar, with Tamar as the ball. I think it broke her back.

Kittens are free, when you can get them, so taking her to the vet wasn’t an option, since as Michele, my boss, says, “The vet will just tell us how much it will cost to put her down.”

So we put her in a box with some towels. She went to sleep and slept and slept.

She purrs constantly, not because she’s content but because she’s badly injured, an odd thing cats do.

On Tuesday she kept getting out of the box and trying to crawl away, but she has to pull herself along with her front legs. She can move her back legs, but can’t make them work. Ben and Amanda and I stuck around at the Bremers house so we could eat pizza with Michele’s sister Adrienne and watch Lieberman at the RNC. The kitten would only stop panicking and trying to get out of the box if I held her in my lap, so that’s where she spent the evening. If I shifted, her eyes would fly open, she’d dig her front claws into my left thigh, and try to get away from whatever it was that was terrifying her. But when I settled her down in my lap again, she’d curl up as best she could and go back to sleep. When we left, she was content in her box again.

The rest of the week she didn’t try to get out of the box. She just wanted to sleep. I put her in a sun beam when there was sun. Otherwise I kept her box by my desk.

One of the volunteers force fed her yogurt on Wednesday. And Thursday I force fed her a little skim milk. She would swallow and lick if you poured it into the side of her mouth, but she didn’t want it voluntarily.

I wonder if that’s her way of trying to die.

I soaked some dog food in water on Friday and forced her to swallow a good bit of that. I gave her a sponge bath because she’s too weak to clean herself.

But she just seems to be getting weaker. Her third eyelid doesn’t close, a sign of an injured cat. She picks her head up and can’t keep it up, just wobbling from side to side. She can’t focus her eyeballs either.

But she was mewing at me on Friday. I didn’t know what she wanted, so I forced some more crumb-filled water down her.

I didn’t go into work today, so I’ll find out tomorrow if she’s dead. I have a feeling she will be.

On Friday Michele called someone who was rumored to have some kittens available.

Alas, that is the life of the barn cat. They’re not pets. They’re utilitarian.

I keep dreaming about her, though. Last week I dreamed I got her to eat something. But night before last I dreamed she died.

Cats often wander off to die, but she dragged herself up to Michele on Tuesday morning. She’s young and could recover. Cats are resilient. Nine lives, all that.

She’s in pain, though. I suppose the humane thing would be go take her box out back and carefully aim the .22 at her head.

But none of us can seem to bring ourselves to do it.

I’ll find out tomorrow morning if my first task of the morning will be to take out the box by my desk.

Just remember, I tell myself. Kittens are free.