It’s spring, which means that my formerly-stray calico cat is out in force in the yard, hunting down and bringing to near-death multitudes of young squirrels and fledgling starlings—unpleasant-sounding birds that are abundant in my city neighborhood. I have a deep respect for nature and a desire to protect all living things, so watching my cat hunt and kill, or rather, nearly-kill, is something like torture for me.
I remember at the age of 5 or 6 watching while a man got pinned under a city bus in downtown Pittsburgh, standing on the sidewalk holding my mother’s hand as we prepared to cross the street to go to one of those downtown department stores that don’t really exist anymore. The man had been trying to get on the bus, but had missed it, and so ran alongside it banging on the bus’s side and yelling. Then he slipped on the curb and went under the rear tires as they drove away. When the driver realized what had happened, he stopped the bus, but the man lay there in the street not moving.
Watching what my cat does to birds and squirrels is much more difficult for me than watching what happened to that man, and it’s not because I lack compassion for other human beings, it’s that I possess über-compassion for creatures of the natural world. My thinking is that they can’t really tell us what they would prefer to see happen, so for instance if we’re handling them in a way they don’t like, it’s rather a challenge for them to let us know in any layers of complexity. If I could, I would take all animals under my wing and nurture and shelter them and cause all peace and happiness to reign in the land.
Except for my stray cat, who is a killer. She is also kind of cute, but she’s still a killer, and she’s merciless and precise, and doesn’t quite finish the job as quickly as I’d like.
Last spring, when this phenomenon came upon us, I tried to help every little fledgling being we discovered in the grass, finding a way to protect it and maybe nurture it back to health, which more often than not is something of a failure. This year, I have relented to the cat and I simply try to put her inside more often. My children have found countless dead critters in the back yard in just the last few weeks. The body count averages two per day. Our yard is small. I would think the birds and squirrels would take a hint, but there seem to be a lot of them. I try to remind my children of this fact—the plenitude—when they bemoan the latest kill. But it is small comfort.
Similarly, my children—my own little fledglings—demonstrated new levels of capacity just recently. I had to attend an evening meeting for work, but lacked child care. River was going to be in New York City for the evening and late into the night for his own work meeting (well, a celebratory dinner with travel by limousine, if that can be said to be actual work). My mother, who has blessedly been available for babysitting from time to time, was likewise not available that night. I had to face either not attending a community meeting I found quite vital to attend and cover, staying home and sulking about how my children are a burden and trap me and prevent me from being able to accomplish anything in the world, or I could do the obvious and take them with me.
I hemmed and hawed about this decision for several days, and on an hourly basis changed my mind about what the right approach would be. Perhaps I was a bad mother for wanting to take them with me. Perhaps I was a bad mother for wanting to stay home. Perhaps I was a poor excuse for a reporter, since after all I don’t get paid for my reporting. Perhaps I was a poor excuse for any kind of professional, since I don’t have child care arranged. I lingered in these depressing thoughts for a while. Then I talked about it with a couple of people. Each encouraged me to take my children with me, and said a few things—just a few small words is all—about how such a thing could be done, and how it wasn’t really any big deal after all. Gradually, I warmed to the idea and realized that I don’t have to draw such strict lines in my life between yes and no, black and white, on and off, mother and not-mother.
So I prepared the children the night before. I took a deep breath and said, “I’m taking you with me to work tomorrow night.” Just one of them rolled her eyes, and the others just looked at me blankly. I explained the purpose of the community meeting. I told them that we would bring supplies for them (books, quiet materials), and that I would reward them afterward.
We have a special bag we’ve been preparing for the move. In it there are a variety of toys and games that River had collected both from a dumpster-dive at LEGO a few years ago, where he used to freelance (lots of wet cardboard boxes in perfectly good shape otherwise; they’d been left out in the rain), as well as from some work he had done designing a few toys and games for Hasbro, based near here. We put all these things into a bag the size of something Santa Claus might carry on his sleigh, or maybe just a little bit smaller, and then stuffed it into a closet for a couple of months. My thinking with the bag was to pull it out when things feel a bit dire, when we need a reward for some tremendous accomplishment, or maybe a nice chunk of happy distraction. Who could guess what would arise?
As it happened, on the same day of River’s New York trip, and my important meeting, we were also waiting to hear word about the house we’re trying to buy in Hartford. We were just two days away from our eagerly-anticipated closing date the previous week when the seller learned that she would have to pay a large pre-payment penalty to the bank for her mortgage. She didn’t have the money available to cover this. We learned about it and held our breath. On the day of the closing, we learned that she wanted to borrow money from us. We declined, after considering it. Then the day passed and no closing took place. The holiday weekend arrived and we felt disappointed and stressed out. Another day passed and there was no progress, until finally this day arrived of no child care and River gone and so on. At any moment we could hear good news or we could hear bad news.
So it was definitely time for the prize bag, which I have to say did motivate my children significantly. We pulled everything out of the bag and they looked at all of it. I told them, “If you do a great job tomorrow helping me at my meeting, you can pick one of these.” Their eyes sparkled and they examined everything closely, marveling at the colorful boxes and interesting, unusual toys. (For example, one box River designed is for Lazer Bounce.) They each selected one item and we set it aside for the next day.
The day came and the morning passed. A while later, I learned good news about the house. We have a new closing date in early June and the seller miraculously came up with the necessary funds, or otherwise worked it out with her bank. Some time after that, my children came home from school, I fed them an early dinner, we went to the meeting with everyone well-prepared for 2.5 hours of sitting quietly without disturbing Mama, and all went as smoothly as if I had scripted it myself. I was amazed.
When we were leaving the meeting (pictured above—no kids visible; they disappeared into the pews), one of the young men present who works for the city said to my children, “You guys were so good—you think your mom will take you out for ice cream now? You can thank me later.” I did take them out for ice cream, too, even though it meant a disagreeable sugar high that would later make it very difficult to get them to bed. But it was all very much worth it.