Reflections on the Third Week of Fall - Six Pointed Ears

Napping Kittens - Gilbert, Ande, and Rills

Sitting in my log chair Thursday afternoon, I gazed through the sliding glass door at a luminescent, powder blue sky and an array of sun-highlighted orange leaves. Below the door, the kitten fountain bubbled and burbled while the kittens napped on the sofa. With Spence in Cleveland handing out lead safe housing pamphlets at a health fair, the kittens had room to stretch—back paws backward, front paws forward—which made a furry line rather than their usual curled heap.

Rills flicked an ear.

Kitten ears. The vet had instructed me to keep their ears clean—a task best attempted with the kittens in rest mode.

Tiptoeing to the kitchen, I filled a dipping bowl with water and grabbed the package of cotton swabs.

Rills opened one eye and glared at the swabs.

Though I preferred to clean Rills’s ears last because he squirmed, scratched, and growled during the process, I needed to minimize his protest by swabbing him before his drowsy state changed to wide-awake energized mode. I grabbed him.

He squirmed in my hands and waved his paws—claws out—when I lifted him off the sofa.

I reached for the fleece blanket. Avoiding the swiping claws, I wrapped the blanket around Rills—once, twice, three times—making sure none of his legs escaped. With him mummified except for his head, I set him on my lap and dipped the end of a swab into the water. I held the point of his ear with one hand and maneuvered the swab tip around ridges inside his outer ear.

He squirmed.

Tightening the blanket around his neck, I selected a clean swab, wet it, and took a deep breath for the hard part—the part that made me gasp when I had watched the vet clean Gilbert’s ears. I feared she would break his eardrum. She assured me a cat’s eardrum lay deep inside, and my kittens had excessive dirt in their ears. “Don’t be afraid. Dig in and clean.”

I stuck the swab into the wide part of the ear canal and swirled.

Rills squirmed and whined.

At least he’d remained semi-calm. One ear done, I shifted his blanketed body so I could clean the ridges in his second ear.

He squirmed and growled.

As fast as Rills pulled his paw from the blanket, I tucked the paw back in, changed swabs, and inserted it into the canal.

He squirmed and thrashed his legs making the blanket roll like waves on a stormy lake.

Setting him on the floor, I exhaled. Two ears done.

Rills shook his head as if shaking off a pond full of water. He scratched an ear with his hind leg and shook his head again.

I grabbed Ande and sat him on my lap. No need for the blanket. I held his head with one hand and maneuvered the swab with the other.

Ande shook his head while I cleaned. Four ears done.

After I set him on the floor, he walked to Rills. They shook their heads together until Rills pounced on a stuffed Christmas tree toy some kitten had abandoned by the food bowl next to the fountain. He snarled. Biting into the top, he shook his head which waved the tree.

The tree dropped to the floor.

Rills put his paw on a gold garland and ripped the treetop off with his teeth.

Glad Rills took his annoyance out on the toy, I grabbed Gilbert and lay him on his side across my lap.

He muscled the point of his ear back and down to flatten the ear.

I pulled it open.

He flattened it.

Wishing I had muscles to open and close my ears, I inserted the swab, cleaned, and set Gilbert down. None of the kittens ran away and hid. They stayed on the floor, which appeared snow covered with fragments of toy stuffing Rills kept scattering. In the faux snow, three kittens shook like a trio of bobble heads. Six ears done.

I emptied the dipping bowl, so the kittens didn’t pounce on it and empty the water for me, then climbed to the loft.

Listening to the On the Media podcast of “The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee,” I spread my log cabin quilt across the sewing table and tugged the binding from the front to the back over the lumpy inside batting as white as the snowy toy stuffing which I needed to sweep—after Rills had worked through his frustrations.

Stitch. Stitch. Stitch.

When I’d hand sewn half of the left side, the podcast ended and a grinding sound floated up from the great room.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

The kittens’ water fountain made that noise when water ran low. Maybe ear cleaning made them thirsty.

Sticking my needle inside a quilted daisy on the back of the quilt, I headed downstairs.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

The circle of kittens staring at the fountain blocked my view.

Drowned Tree

I strode to the kittens which, in unison, craned their heads toward me then looked back at the fountain.

On the slide, below the bubbling water, lay the Christmas tree toy in a halo of soggy stuffing.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

“Who drowned the pruned tree?” slipped out of my mouth before I decided it didn’t matter.

The kittens swiveled their heads, again, and stared with not-me-innocent eyes.

Reaching over them, I unplugged the fountain and carried it—Christmas tree and all—to the kitchen sink. First I rung the water from the tree and tossed it into the trash. Then I dumped the water, disassembled the fountain, and scrubbed its pieces.

Ande and Rills paced beside my feet.

Gilbert curled on the sofa for a nap.

After reassembling the clean pieces, I carried the fountain across the room.

Rills and Ande followed.

I set the fountain down and fetched the filtered water pitcher.

Rills licked the wet metal.

The stream of water from the pitcher made the kittens step back. I plugged the fountain in.

Burble, burble, burble. Water bubbled out the top and down the slide.

Gilbert jumped off the sofa, thud, and padded over.

The kittens circled and drank. Sated, one by one, they jumped back to the sofa, stretched their legs, and kneaded the fleece sofa cover with long, sharp claws.

The claws needed clipped so that the next time they climbed our pants or walked across our shoulders, we didn’t need a tourniquet.

I sat in my log chair and gazed through the sliding glass door at the luminescent sky and sunlit leaves. I could clip nails on the twelve furry paws another day. And spreading the job over a dozen days might save the stuffed mice in the toy basket from decapitation and drowning.

Rills Drinking