Goodbye Stormy

This week Stormy, the kitten, turned seven weeks old and we were preparing to move her from my parent's home and into ours.  I was on my way to have the car inspected this morning when my father called with sad news.  Stormy was dead!  The last of eight kittens had gone on to kitty heaven to be with her brothers and sisters who had gone before her.  My husband took care of burying her before I returned home, and there was one very sad little girl at my house who wouldn't have the kitten for a pet that she had become so attached to.  My husband is a great writer and upon returning home I found him typing furiously on his computer.  I did not realize how much this little kitten's death had touched him until I read the finished story.  Here is what he wrote -

Scooter's Story

It was raining when he buried her.

I was out in the yard, wandering from dry spot to dry spot, under the deck to under the truck, to under the tree, back to the deck.  I was trying to avoid the other cat, Sasha, whose naïve  attitude and blind affection assure that one of the humans will ALWAYS pick her up and let her sleep in their lap.  Not me.  I’m Mr. Independent.  I know the game.  They feed me (from the same bowl as that Siamese bimbo), and I allow them to scratch under my chin or pet my head.  Whatever. Point is, I was out in the yard when the Master walked by carrying his shovel and a Wal-Mart bag, heavy with something small inside.

The shovel.

Around here, it’s a thing of legend… a fairy tale almost, or a kind of boogey man.  Whenever a new animal comes in to our family, the shovel is one of the first topics of discussion.  Maggie, the golden retriever, lives in fear of the day when the Master will have to use it for her.  She was just a puppy when she first saw it, digging a hole for the beagle that died from being  too old.  The Master had tears in his eyes as he drove the shovel into the dirt, but the “chuff” sound it made sounded more like “you too” to Maggie’s ears. 

The shovel has been around since forever, digging holes for hamsters and rabbits and chickens and even Bella the goat’s sister, Lucky.  She was not so lucky.  I remember when the Master came inside after gouging the earth for a long time on that gray day, and he said to his wife, “That’s it.  We’re never getting another animal bigger than the hole I want to dig for it when it dies.”

This day, he was digging another hole.  A small one.  I settled down in the gravel of the driveway under the truck and watched him heave the soil, in great black lumps.  When he was satisfied that the hole was deep enough, he carefully placed the bag inside. As I watched, I saw a tiny gray tail push up against the translucent white bag.  So this was the last one, then.

This was Number Eight. The Survivor. The calico cat next door had birthed a litter of kittens 7 weeks ago, and one by one in that first week, they all died.  All but Stormy, the gray kitten. She will make it, they said.  She is strong, they said.  Look how she plays!  Haha, she is quite a climber, isn’t she? 

I started washing my front paws as shovelful by shovelful he undug the hole.

I wonder how long it will be before there are no places to bury us?  This spot, the one with the kitten, was near the little apple tree.  My eyes wandered around the yard, and I noted all the places that had little animals sleeping a couple of feet below the grass or weeds or trees or shrubs above.  Sam and Charlie, brothers, were buried in the front yard.  Those two cats lived for a long time, or so the story goes.  They were way before my time.  The other cats, Petey and Alex, were in the back yard. Chubbers the hamster is under a brick, which is tangled up in the roots of the tall sycamore tree that the Master parks his truck under. Sara the beagle, she’s buried near the shed, cruelly close to Maggie’s pen.  No wonder she freaks out about the shovel, she has to look at that grave all day long, every day.  Lucky the goat occupies a spot on the boundary of the back yard and the woods beyond.  There is a great big fluffy rabbit buried at the base of the Curly Willow tree. Yoyo, also before my time, is buried somewhere but no one can seem to remember where.  The other animals seem to remember stories about him being carried away to the vet and never returning, but I think the Master would have brought him back to help fill up another hole somewhere here in the yard.  He loved that cat.  Stormy’s siblings, all 7 of them, were in tiny holes scattered around the property. The first hole was hard for the Master to dig.  He was very sad.  The next one… a little easier.  By the time he got to the seventh hole, days later, he seemed almost dead to the horrible thing he was doing.  But the eighth hole, that was hard for him.  His daughter, the one who I allow sometimes to pet me as I sleep on her bed, was attached to Stormy.  That was going to be her cat. 

The last scoop of dirt fell on top of the hole, and the Master whacked it flat with the shovel before stomping on it to level it out.  I wonder what was going through his mind as the damp dirt gave way to his shoe.  His face was a mask, but I admit that human faces are always hard for me to read. More telling than his face was the way he let the shovel drag behind him as he took it back to the shed, leaving a faint trail in the wet grass.

I wonder if he ever gets tired of digging all those holes.

Sasha came bumbling by, and I took a swipe at her but it was half-hearted.  She turned around for a second like she wanted to play, then noticed for the first time the fresh pile of dirt nearby.

“Another one?” she asked.

I nodded.