I had been getting chores done early as Ed and I had plans to go out to supper. There was about an hour of daylight left when I heard the blood-curdling screams of the lost kitten out behind the barn. By the sounds of it, the poor little thing couldn’t have been more than a few weeks old, and as I made mental notes of all orphan kitten supplies in the house, Ed gave me the “OK, go; I’ll eat hot dogs for supper” look.
In my mind, I had already named the kitten Charlie, and when I found him, he would be black with four white paws and sport the cutest pink nose, along with a white tip on his tail.
Walking through the tall grass on the edge of the trees was hair-raising, as I knew there would be creepy crawlers I couldn’t see ready to eat me alive. But Charlie was lost, hungry, and really making a fuss. Furious that the mother cat couldn’t come and rescue her own kitten, I tripped over a log and banged my knee up pretty dang good. Limping into the trees, I could tell Charlie was just ahead as the frantic little meows were getting louder.
A thicket of bramble burrs was a tough obstacle to get through, and a cotton T-shirt didn‘t help any. I looked and felt like Bigfoot in the forest on a very bad hair day.
Hearing Charlie just on the other side of a big patch of burning weed, I did what any kitten saver would do—put my arms up and treaded through. “Ouch” and a few whispered swear words so the young kitten wouldn’t hear and get a complex right off the bat; “Don’t worry, Charlie, I’m coming to the rescue!” Dang, for the young age of this fellow he could scamper pretty fast, but I figured he was just afraid of me and would soon come to his senses that I was only there to help.
Now at a corner of the farm I’d never been to before, deep in the trees, the heebie-jeebies set in. It was close to dark and beside a fallen tree was an old, old pitchfork—just stuck in the ground as if someone had just been there ahead of me and was lurking around ready to pounce.
Charlie’s screams brought me back to reality before I could imagine any other bogeymen on the prowl. “Here, kitty, kitty… whether you like it or not, you’re going to be rescued and adopted by a nice little old lady and served warm milk every night.”
I didn’t want to use my trusty Mini Mag flashlight as it might scare Charlie further, but I had no choice as it was about pitch dark. About that time, Charlie’s scream changed, or rather, he was higher up off the ground.
Dang, he had crawled up a tree, and I sure didn’t have a choice but to go up after him.
“Easy, Charlie, don’t be afraid; we’ll soon be in a nice warm house all cozy and safe.”
Half-ways up the mighty oak, I got to thinking that if this kitten could climb trees, maybe he was a bit older than I had figured and just might be OK on his own. Hanging on with both arms around the tree trunk, I searched the branches, clenching the Mini Mag in my mouth. No kitten could be spotlighted, but his frantic cries kept me climbing.
What the Sam Heck? Charlie was now frantically, screaming from the next tree over! How could a teeny-weenie, lost and lonely kitten jump 10 feet from one tree to the next? As the flashlight fell to the ground, I heard Charlie’s cries jump to the next tree and then the next. Perplexed as all get-out, slithering halfway and falling the rest, I made a semi-soft landing right on top of an old, rusted barbed-wire fence.
They wouldn’t let me into the clinic until I had picked all the burs off. Soon I was dressed pretty in pink calamine lotion and got a tetanus shot that hurt like a son of a gun. The doctor asked the usual questions but repeated twice the ones on home safety.
In the lounge waiting for the X-Ray results on my knee, I picked up and flipped through a bird magazine titled “Bird Bazaar.” To my utter astonishment, there in the centerfold was a picture of Charlie! It wasn’t the photo that gave him away; it was the description of his rather unusual chatter: “like a kitten in distress,” a member of the Cuckoo Bird family.
“Dear Audubon Society…”