LITTLE SOCKS: A True Story - PART III

When you live in a small village, anything new tends to attract attention and comment. Certainly, a little kitten sitting in the display window of a vacant business didn’t go unnoticed! The Papa first saw Little Socks when he came to work after Christmas. This was on Tuesday. Though the sight was startling, he remembered having seen the kitten out roaming before, and assumed it must have found a way to come and go from the old building. He can be excused, we hope, for not being too concerned. After all, there have always been cats - and dogs, for that matter - loose around the tiny, somewhat quirky, backwoods village. When he looked again later, the kitten was gone, presumably back to where it came from.

The next day as he passed on his way to the post office, there it was again! The post mistress told him there had been many others who mentioned it, suggesting something should be done. No one was volunteering themselves for the job, however. When the Papa got back to the shop, he told the Mama she should go take a look. She opened the door and peered down the street. Sure enough, she could see the kitten without even venturing out of the doorway.

The two humans walked down together to look in the window. The kitten was crying hoarsely. Papa walked around the outside of the building, looking for whatever hole or opened door the animal might have used for entry; there was nothing he could see but the second story broken window. Here was a dilemma. A conference followed and the Mama left to pick up a live trap from their friends. Papa, meanwhile, phoned the owner of the building and got permission to kick in one of the side doors. It wasn’t locked, but it was wedged too firmly shut to open easily.

When the Mama returned, not more than 5 minutes passed between setting up the trap baited with tuna to the springing of the trap by the starving kitten who came out of hiding as soon as the humans were outside again. Now what to do with it, they wondered? There seemed only one viable solution. They took Little Socks home.

Once home, they set up food for all the ferals, and then released the kitten. Though she had finished the whole can of tuna before they’d reached the house, Little Socks went straight for the food bowls! In between bites, she purred and rubbed against the other ferals and the hay bales and the carrier, and anything else in reach.

Now we come to a rather strange occurrence. One by one, all the other young cats disappeared into the weeds, till there was only Mama Cat and two of the unspayed black ferals and Little Socks. Then Mama Cat, who didn’t sleep in the shelter with the others, left to go back to her den, wherever that may be. Then the two unspayed blacks, who presumably live in the barn across the street, left also. Little Socks was alone again. But she was full and tired after a long day, and she had been for a little while in the company of others; she was ready for sleep. The last the human Mama saw of her that night was the sight of her retreating tail going into the shelter.

TO BE CONTINUED...

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