All I wanted to do was take a picture of my sister’s car, which had been taking up prime real estate in the driveway. She’d had the For Sale sign on it for months, taken it down for a potential buyer, but then replaced it when that buyer fell through.
The Stars of the Show
Now that she had a new job, I wanted her to advertise to her colleagues that a reliable, inexpensive preowned car was for sale. After all, most preowned cars have dramatically risen in price, not necessarily in value, since the pandemic. Supply chain issues not only halted the production of new cars, but delayed the production of car parts for repairs.
Big Mama
As I reached the front door to enter the house after taking a picture of the car, I heard the unmistakable mewling of kittens, coming from the direction of the patio. No feral kittens in sight. Following the sound to the hibachi grill, I carefully lifted the heavy black tarp. An adult cat bolted, leaving five kittens.
After taking their picture, I gently replaced the tarp, made eye contact with the mother cat and entered the house. Looking out from the glass patio door, I watched the cat carry her kittens one by one to secret them somewhere in the neighbor’s yard.
The next day, I thought about those kitties when the bottom fell out, flooding in some places. They would have been sopping wet had they stayed under the hibachi grill tarp. I could only hope that they were in a warm, dry place during the storm.
Whoever survives will be the next generation of hardy feral cats. Even though we don’t feed them, those cats are probably the reason I’ve hardly seen a squirrel or other critters around here. In other words, those kittens will have plenty to eat if they make it out of infancy.