Hi, y'all! Welcome to Nurse Kelley's second ever pootie diary!
I'm going to tell you a short story about Miss Scarlett and her babies.
Wasn't she a pretty girl?
My old male Burmese, Joe Willie, spent the last few years of his life being tormented by a youngster named Duke. Joe Willie would crip across the hardwood floor, oblivious to the quivering kitten hiding behind the arm of the sofa until said kitten knocked him halfway across the room, his old bones meeting the floor with a terrible sound.
"You just wait," I'd say to Duke. "When Joe Willie crosses the Rainbow Bridge I'm going to buy you the meanest kitten I can find."
Duke grew up and spent two years bathing Joe Willie when arthritis made it impossible for the old man to groom himself. I think he grieved as much as I did after the day I held Joe Willie in my arms at the vet's office, feeling him purr until his heart stopped. Duke seemed sad, depressed.
I remembered my threat. Thinking we might all be ready for a change, I found Miss Scarlett - the first female pootie I ever owned. She was always a tiny thing, never topping seven pounds, and her dark chocolate fur felt like velvet. When I lifted her out of the carrier and let Duke have a sniff, my sweet boy was a goner. From that first moment, Miss Scarlett was in charge. Of all of us.
When she was five months old she came into heat. She paced. She howled. She ... assumed the position. Duke didn't have the equipment or the inclination but he loved her, so he grabbed her by the scruff of her neck, straddled her, and looked at me for help.
I had her spayed the next morning.
Scarlett stopped tormenting Duke, but no surgery could kill her strong maternal instinct. She found a rabbit's foot key chain somewhere in the house and turned it into her baby: she groomed it, she disciplined it, she played with it, she carried it around, and - when her "baby" got on her last nerve - she dropped it in the dish of dry food so it could eat and she could nap. All was well in Scarlett's nursery until the day she decided her baby needed a drink of water.
Uh-oh. Ever smelled a rabbit's foot that's been soaked overnight? Duke and I buried Scarlett's baby in the trash.
Miss Scarlett went into a decline. She looked for her damn baby every day, making me open closets and cabinets so she could inspect them, and she completely ignored the adoring Duke, making him almost as sad.
I couldn't find another rabbit's foot. I looked all over Houston. (This was in the Dark Ages, before teh Internet.)
Just about this time I visited a friend in Calgary. We walked into a little gift shop up by Lake Louise, and there they were: the biggest rabbit's feet I had ever seen. I bought eight of them.
Joy in Scarlett's nursery! At first I gave her just one of the "babies", but the day came when she was helping me too much in the kitchen or laundry room or office, and I produced the whole litter. From that moment until four days before her death at the age of seventeen, Scarlett tended her babies. Their number dwindled over the years, death coming in the water dish or during a move or in the jaws of a yellow lab named Cindy, but if you look in a small porcelain box on my bookshelf you will find three treasures:
A chain Joe Willie spent a lifetime retrieving,
A little felt snake Duke played with and slept with before Scarlett came,
And a large yellow rabbit's foot.
Rest in peace, my darlings. I'll see you again one day.♥