October 22, 2015 (Thursday)
PBS had an interesting program last night about cats. I learned something. They babysit for each other. They showed a scene where a mama cat had a tiny offspring in need of constant care, so when the other cats were feeding together, she was left out. She was very hungry, so her sister showed up and took her place long enough for her to go and feast on the scraps left by the other cats. I did not know cats had babysitters. Live and learn.
We once had two little Siamese cats, both female. They grew up and had kittens, all of 
them Siamese, 5 each. The two mama cats had entirely opposite personalities. One was not sociable and sort of irritable. The other was happy and outgoing. The happy cat adored the grumpy one. When the kittens were nursing, the two families of cats were in separate locations, but one day the happy cat moved her kittens to be with her sister and her brood. She seemed to love that sister very much, and once relocated, she was much happier.
Well, one day the happy cat met an untimely death in the street. A car ran over her. The surviving kitty tried to be a mother to ten growing adolescent kittens. Bless her heart, she didn’t have a strong maternal instinct anyway, and it was a miserable time for her. I remember her looking at me one day as she was going through her ordeal, and her eyes seemed to be pleading with me to help. She meowed pitifully. We did try to help. Eventually it all worked out somehow.
Since that time, we have always had our cats spayed or neutered. It’s the humane thing to do. Here’s a picture of our current resident, “Pepper.” He is Dwight’s very close friend. I was going to say he is Dwight’s cat, but a little reflection on that statement led me to restate that. We all know that cats, even very sweet-natured ones, belong to no one. We belong to them.
We tried having a dog a time or two, but they always dug up Wanda’s flower beds, and so Wanda found new homes for them.
We had a parakeet once, and some hamsters on another occasion. But our pets have mostly been cats. I’m allergic to them, and can’t touch them, but they’ve always “belonged” to someone else in the family anyway. They are interesting animals, indeed, and worthy of study. Who would have thought they could babysit for each other?