{"id":4758,"date":"2012-12-07T17:27:21","date_gmt":"2012-12-08T01:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/?p=4758"},"modified":"2013-05-27T21:15:11","modified_gmt":"2013-05-28T04:15:11","slug":"a-mothers-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/a-mothers-love\/","title":{"rendered":"A Mother’s Love"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>I was living in an old log house in the wilderness with my two black and white kittens named Tai and Chi.\u00a0 They were sisters rescued from a family of feral cats at a farm near the city and were used to playing outside day and night.\u00a0 After keeping them inside for a week in order for them to get accustomed to their new surroundings, I decided it was time to let them out.\u00a0 They had been whining by the front door for several days now.\u00a0 When I opened the door, they literally darted out, filled with glee.\u00a0 Watching them over a few days, I noticed they had an uncanny \u2018woods instinct\u2019 for any danger that might be present.\u00a0 They would keep their distance when raccoons were nearby and one day, when coming down the driveway, both of them suddenly stopped, fluffed all up with their hair standing on end and raced under a bush.\u00a0 Then I noticed the eagle flying around high overhead.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know how they knew it was there.\u00a0 After that, I didn\u2019t worry about them too much.\u00a0 We lived far enough away from civilization that the woods animals lived by their natural laws of the wild and didn\u2019t bother humans or animal companions as long as they didn\u2019t interfere in their own daily routines.\u00a0 Wildlife was given first leeway, always.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It was a very dull, rainy, spring afternoon; it had been raining for almost a week and everything was soggy.\u00a0 My daughter had come for a visit michael kors outlet<\/a>\u00a0and we were relaxing in the living room when we heard a faint mewing sound coming from outside the front door.\u00a0 We got up to investigate and there was Chi looking up at us, mewing in a very plaintiff manner.\u00a0 We felt she wanted something but we didn\u2019t know what it was.\u00a0 She just kept looking up and mewing.\u00a0 I leaned down to pet her, thinking she just wanted to be consoled for some reason but she moved away then stopped, turned around and mewed.\u00a0 I moved forward into the driveway and again leaned down to pet her.\u00a0 Again she moved away, stopped, turned around and mewed.\u00a0 My daughter said, \u201cI think she wants us to follow her, Mom.\u201d\u00a0 So we went back in, grabbed our coats, then headed out to follow her down the driveway.\u00a0 She would walk down the road a little, stop, look at us to make sure we were still behind her, and move forward again.\u00a0 She did this several times until she was satisfied we were going to continue following her.<\/p>\n

She led us to a below-ground-level window box on a small, run-down hunter\u2019s cabin about half a mile from the house and there, crouched in slowly rising rainwater, was Tai and a bundle of tiny black balls of fluff all mewing and shivering.\u00a0 Obviously, both Tai and Chi had had kittens and were all grouped together to keep warm.\u00a0 When I leaned down to pet Tai, however, she growled at me threateningly which she had never, ever done before.\u00a0 She had always been the most trusting one, wanting lots of cuddles while Chi had always been rather stand-offish.\u00a0 Chi was sitting beside us at this point, but seemingly now impatient, jumped down into the \u2018crib\u2019 (which my daughter and I later named the window box), grabbed a kitten, and jumped out.\u00a0 She sat there looking up at us, with the kitten firmly ensconced in her mouth, and began to slowly move away back down the road, then stopped to looked back at us.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy God, Mom,\u201d exclaimed my daughter, \u201cI think she wants us to help her move the kittens.\u201d\u00a0 So we both reached into the crib for some kittens while Tai growled and pawed at us, making several other very strange noises at the same time.\u00a0 She obviously did not want us to touch them.\u00a0 When we both had our hands full, we followed Chi, who carried on as she had when leading us to the crib.\u00a0 She was now leading us back to the house.\u00a0 When we arrived I wasn\u2019t sure what she would want to do, so I simply opened the front door.\u00a0 Chi entered quickly, kitten still firmly intact in her mouth, and ran through the living room and up the stairs toward a small bedroom, where she deposited the kitten in a tiny crawl space under the roof at the top of the stairs.\u00a0 We followed.\u00a0 When she came out, she promptly sat down in front of us and looked up, so we leaned down and carefully put the kittens down in front of her.\u00a0 She grabbed them one by one, depositing them tenderly with the first, and then proceeded back down the stairs and out the door, watching for us to follow.<\/p>\n

We again headed down the driveway to the little cabin.\u00a0 Upon picking up the last of the kittens from the \u2018crib\u2019, Tai was now outraged.\u00a0 They were her kittens and she didn\u2019t want them moved, but she followed Chi and the two of us back to the house with the new little refuge, whining all the way.\u00a0 Once there, she entered the crawl space, returned with a kitten in her mouth, and headed into the small bedroom.\u00a0 There, she jumped up onto the bed and gently put the kitten down.\u00a0 Chi appeared instantly, snatched up the kitten, ran back into the crawl space with it and then came out to challenge Tai.<\/p>\n

My daughter and I were now thoroughly stunned by this and went downstairs into the living room to let the two cats sort it out.\u00a0 After once again making sure all the kittens were safe and sound in their little lair, Chi came back down the stairs with Tai following behind.\u00a0 They came through the living room and stood looking up at the front door, so I opened it for them.\u00a0 They headed outside then instantly, sat down in the middle of the driveway, their backs against each other, facing in opposite directions.\u00a0 It was approximately thirty seconds before they got up, walked a little further up the road and sat down again in the same position.\u00a0 After one more episode like this, they walked side by side and sat down, this time both facing forward, then got up, slowly turned around and walked very closely side by side again back into the house and up the stairs to the new lair.\u00a0 Chi had won the argument and neither my daughter nor I had heard a sound from either cat during this whole phenomenon.<\/p>\n

My daughter and I were now in tears.\u00a0 We had just witnessed a survival incident of an animal whose love for her family had saved the children from drowning.\u00a0 We were not sure why Tai acted the way she did, but it didn\u2019t keep Tai from taking her turn at feeding and caring for the kittens.\u00a0 Both cats turned out to be very good mothers and the kittens did not seem to mind which mother tended to them.\u00a0 From then on, they were very well cared for \u2013 all nine of them.<\/p>\n

Footnote:\u00a0 I had not known Tai and Chi were pregnant but after finding good homes for the kittens, they were both spayed.\u00a0 Funny, though \u2013 I had never seen another cat in the area, nor did I afterward \u2013 and we lived there for over ten years.<\/p>\n

Melodee Blythe Bio:<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/a>Born in Ontario and raised in Alberta, Melodee first began writing poems and stories at the age of twelve, spurred on by a great literature teacher and a creative writing course. In later years she continued studies in other writing courses whenever time and opportunity arose.<\/p>\n

Her childhood life was full of adventures and happy memories but her love of the mountainous wilderness later drew her toBritish Columbiawhere she has spent most of her life enjoying many outdoor activities and especially the serene spirituality of it all. Her great fondness for all animals was ignited by watching wild animals in their environment and how they related to one another, and to humans who happened upon them.\u00a0 To the same degree, her love of cats and horses brought her a sense of peace and belonging.<\/p>\n

Melodee is now retired and these animals and their journeys are being written into a children\u2019s series of books and short stories. She is also writing her first novel \u2013 a fiction which shed hopes to finish within a couple of years.<\/p>\n

Back to <\/strong>Stories<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was living in an old log house in the wilderness with my two black and white kittens named Tai and Chi.\u00a0 They were sisters rescued from a family of feral cats at a farm near the city and were used to playing outside day and night.\u00a0 After keeping them inside for a week in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":770,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98,64,39,5],"tags":[184,159,140,119],"class_list":["post-4758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adoption","category-animal-communication","category-animal-wisdom","category-parenting","tag-adoption","tag-animal-communication","tag-animal-wisdom","tag-parenting"],"aioseo_notices":[],"views":10377,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/770"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4758\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}