my brave barney
After a brief thunderstorm, I walked to the trailer park mailbox row along the busy highway near Little Rock, Ark. As I approached the driveway I saw 3 boys playing with something in the muddy ditch. It was September and blast-furnace hot after the storm and I wondered if the kids had found a frog or, worse, a snake but as I got nearer I heard a sound - a faint squeak, more of a gasp than a meow. A cat? A kitten? I walked quickly to the boys and saw, to my horror, what they were doing. Someone had thrown a cardboard box containing 3 newborn kittens into the ditch and the boys had found them. They had cut off the baby’s tails; indeed, had just completed the final amputation as I arrived. I will not go into what I did to the little monsters but suffice it to say they ran away leaving the gaunt, soaked and mutilated babies on the ground. I took them to my vet’s where 2 kittens died but one little fighter seemed determined to live. It was cleaned, it’s wound tended to and cord gently removed. My vet didn’t hold out much hope but I asked them to do all they could for the little creature. I didn’t have much money but I’d made up my mind. If it lived, that cat was mine. It was too tiny for gender to be determined and, at that time, it didn’t seem to matter.