God's creatures

We have been fostering neglected dogs that have come into the care of Rescue Foster Adopt, coordinated on TI by Hannah.  My ten year-old daughter, Seffy and I called at Hannah’s place to take home Billy and Caramello, again, who had escaped from our yard and hotfooted it back to her place.  If they weren’t escaping, they were uprooting Tony’s vegetable garden and chewing pegs and clothes.  They ran to us as Hannah walked down the stairs, holding this orphaned, two week old kitten.  

     At the time, she had just given him his first feed.  He was snuggled in a hand towel, fast asleep and the gentle vibration of his purr floated into the Seffy’s ears just as her eyes lit up. 

     I saw an opportunity. 

     I gave Seffy an ultimatum: the kitten or Billy and Caramello.

     The kitten won and so did I.  Or so I thought. 

     “He needs a name,” said Hannah.  “How about Diego?”

     Within a few hours, I had renamed him Diablo.  He meowed incessantly which was a big problem when Seffy went to sleep and was woken when he meowed.  She fed and settled him and went to sleep and was woken when he meowed and so on till I snapped.
     “Give me the bloody kitten,” I yelled and she went back to bed crying with separation anxiety.

     I took Diablo to bed with me, and curled my arm around him, snuggled in a pillowcase.  He kept meowing.  I fed him, again with the kitty formula and syringe and we went back to bed.  He meowed. And meowed. 

     I recall rescuing an abandoned chick and taking it to bed, wrapped safely in a towel.  Just before morning, drugged by the deepest sleep, I inadvertently rolled my head onto this chick and killed it.  When I woke and realised my crime, I cried and cried.  That was three years ago.

     I am older and wiser.  As Diablo meowed I wished, in my sleepless despair (thanks to Billy and Caramello's numerous midnight escape attempts), I would fall asleep, roll onto him and crush the air from his lungs, as painlessly as possible for him.  At least, that would be God’s way of saying his little life was unsustainable without a mother. I could never manage this routine every night.

     But I couldn’t fall asleep while he meowed on and on.

     After two hours, I got up, fed him (the last supper), wrapped and shoved him in a box in the office thinking nature could damn well have her way.  Oh, I may have sworn at him.  I hoped, I mean, I expected he would freeze to death.  After all, it had been 22 degrees at night.

     In the morning, the bastard was still alive.  My daughter was delighted and has been besotted with him since.  As if he knew he was padding on thin ice with me, he has slept through the two nights since.  I am back to calling him Diego. 

     Seffy waits by his box for him to wake, she feeds and cuddles him, talks to him and coos him to sleep. 

     I reckon a person who treats animals with love and compassion is a good person.  I have always been drawn to ‘animal people’ and sometimes define them as dog people or chook people (who I am especially fond of).

     When I laid eyes on my future husband at the Federal Hotel in early 1994, I felt there was something special about him.  I followed him home and he picked up an old Siamese-cross cat with patchy fur and sores on his face.

     “Meet TI,” said Tony, burying his face in what fur there was.  “He’s my boy, aren’t you, TI?”

     Aaah, a good man I thought.

     And that’s how we’ve raised our kids, to love and respect animals.

     I will always remember Seffy’s and my conversation as we walked home after taking charge of Diego.

     “Mum, I love looking after Rescue Foster Adopt animals.  They’re God’s creatures, you know and they need to be loved.” 

     She had the naïve, hopeful tone only a young child can have, before the harsh realities of life hit home.

     “Yes, darling, but Diego is very young and he might not make it. Sometimes we want to look after animals, but we can’t and they die or need to be put down, preferably put to sleep with an injection.” 

     “Yeah,” she hissed.  “Not bloody, friggin’ drowned.” (She was referring to a former dog catcher advising his method of euthanizing cats.)

     I swelled with pride and thought, There’s my girl.  She has good, Christian values and a sizeable pair of social justice balls ... and the vernacular of a construction worker.