Feeding the Cats

I found this essay I wrote in college.

Feeding the Cats

With the curtains drawn the room glowed with a golden orange hue.  The warm color seemed to make the room unbearably hot and stuffy.  The men had all eaten and were leaning back in their chairs satisfied and silent, each enjoying the moments of rest before returning to the hay fields to finish stacking hay.  My mother began clearing away the dishes from the table.  The entire kitchen was cluttered with pans and cooking utensils.  The clutter added to the oppression of heat, silence and stuffiness.  Mom scraped scraps of food off into a pan and stacked the dishes on the table.

“I’ll take the scraps out to the barn for the cats,” I volunteered.  She hated having all the cats sitting on the door step meowing hungrily and managing to be continually underfoot, so she usually insisted they be fed in the barn,  a task which I didn’t particularly enjoy doing because it was just an extra trip.  But today, I wanted out of the house and she was a little surprised at me but said fine.  As I picked up the pan and headed out the door of the kitchen, my dad called after me:  I stopped to listen.

“Hey! County fair isn’t too far away; if you want those steers looking like anything, you’d better get with it out there.”  His voice was a warning command, not a mere suggestion.

“Yeah, I will.”  I started on out the porch door.

“Hey!”  I paused again getting impatient and wanting to go on out.  “Why don’t you put your steers and my heifer in the pens.  Give them some water and a flake of hay.”

“Okay.”  I was a little perturbed at having a job to do when I went to the barn.  I wanted to just sit there and play with the cats.  I went on out the door towards the barn kicking the gravel as I went along, thinking to myself what a lot of trouble the calves were, wishing that brushing wasn’t one of those vital ingredients to a champion steer.  But Dad was the boss, and what he said went.

The barn was a special place.  The walls were made of cement blocks with large many-paned windows evenly -spaced all around.  A big hayloft and oats bin stretched the full length of the barn, making it a haven for sparrows.  The barn had a high wooden wall dividing it; the north part was a large open pen converted into a sale arena in the fall and a storage area for feed equipment.  The south half had an alley down the middle with pens lining either side.  It was quiet and airy, a slight breeze stirred the dust in the alley, flies buzzed and bounced against the windows.  I unlatched the gate to the pen where hay and straw were piled.

“Here kittykittykitty.”  Immediately cats emerged from everywhere, from on top of the hay, in holes left between bales, the hay loft, outside, just everywhere.  Meowing and standing on their hind legs, they begged to be fed.  When I set the pan down, they all stuck their heads in and made the pan invisible.  I went over to the corner of the pen and reached into a dark hole between two bales, sharp dried hay scratching my arm until I felt a warm furry ball.   Faint hisses drifted out of the dark hole as I intruded.  I pulled the kittens out one by one until all four were out blinking in the light.  Two were all white, one a tiger gray and the fourth black with a white streak on its forehead and white feet.  I lay down in the hay on my side, propping my head on my hand, and pulled the kittens up close to my body.  Awake, they were playful:  chasing after my fingers, attacking each other, tumbling and rolling.  Their fat little bodies and short legs made them clumsy and yet they would spring straight up in the air to pounce on each other.  I chuckled softly to myself; how much I enjoyed these kittens.  “Say, little one, come here,” I pulled the little black one closer rolling him over on his back, scratching his stomach gently.  He chewed on my finger and purred softly.  After playing with the kittens, little red welts appeared all over my hands and forearms where their tiny sharp claws had scratched.

The larger cats slowly finished eating the scraps and sat down to clean themselves, licking their paws and rubbing over their ears.  (I often wondered why their hair didn’t tickle their throat when the cleaned their furry coats with rough pink tongues.  I couldn’t stand to have a piece of hair in my mouth. )  Slowly the cats drifted around the kittens and me.  One settled down on my hip with her front paws curled under her, slanted eyes closed, purring loudly.  Another came close to my face, lightly touching my cheek with her tiny pink nose.  I talked softly to the cats, calling each one by its name, asking how its kittens were or if it had caught a ground squirrel that day.  It seemed petting them wasn’t enough, I had to talk with them and share feelings with each one.

I loved the cats.  They were clean and smelled good.  As I ran my hand down their silky coats that crackled with electricity, the cats purred with pleasure.  They would press against my hand as I scratched their ears.  The cats were independent, coming and going as they pleased.  I liked their arrogant manner that refused control and yet they freely offered their love to me.  In a sense, they were my people, my friends.

Being alone with the cats in the quite of the barn, I had no sense of time.  I felt we were enjoying and sharing together with no concern of what had happened prior to my coming to the barn and no feeling of urgency for anything to come.  Everything around me blended into one.  The cats, the barn, the flies buzzing in the quiet, prickly pieces of hay and the smell of animals were all a part of me, not something I could separate myself from.  There is a unique contentment and satisfaction found in being alone like that.  A warm feeling of happiness filled my body until it was full, not bursting, just full.  The vibrations from the purring cat’s body lying against mine soothed me into a floating sleep, letting my mind free from everything except a deep satisfaction.

The bouncing rattle of a pickup driving into the yard broke the spell of oneness and timelessness.  Suddenly realizing I hadn’t gotten in the steers and heifer, I jumped up leaving a bunch of sleepy-eyed cats looking after me.  Afraid that my dad would come to the barn and find the job undone, I ran the steers into their pen and the heifer in hers, slamming the gates after them.  Nearly tripping over my own feet, I ran to the hay pen and grabbed several flakes of hay, covering the cats with a layer of hay.  I tossed the hay over the fence into the hay boxes and scrambled off to get buckets for water.  Even on full force the water wasn’t filling the buckets fast enough; half-full buckets, I reasoned, would look like the cattle had been in a long time and drunk some of the water.  In my haste, I sloshed water all over my legs and shoes.  After putting the buckets in the pens, I took a brush and comb to brush up the steers.

As I began brushing one steer, I glanced out the window to see if my dad was coming.  I couldn’t believe it; the pickup wasn’t even ours-- someone else had stopped by!  I had done all that frantic rushing for nothing.  I looked around the pen and there sat several cats on their haunches on the fence looking at me.

“You think it’s funny don’t you?”  I laughed at them.  I went over to the hay box and plopped myself down to catch my breath.  One by one the cats came down, pressing their warm bodies against mine, asking for attention.

My Grandparent's House

My grandparents lived on the ranch half a mile away from our house.  The white rectangular house with shutters and awnings on the windows had a front door flanked by two large evergreen trees.  On the west side of the front yard stood a tall Chinese Elm tree anchoring the white picket fence leading to the back door.  The garage stood across the side of the driveway along the fence to the barn corrals.  The traditional red barn with white trim served as the center point for the surrounding corrals in every direction.  Trees on the north and west helped to buffer the stiff Wyoming winds.

 Evidently, as a three-year-old, I decided to go through the pasture to visit Grandma, never thinking that my absence might worry my mother. Needless to say, my parents were frantic wondering where I was.  My dad searching for me had walked all around our house, barn and trees and then down to Grandma's.  As I hear the story,  I received  a switching with a pig weed on my little bare legs on the walk home.  The message was clear and I did not go on my own again until I was older, and then only if my folks knew I was going.

We could either follow the gravel road, which went north over the cattle guard down a steep hill through the pasture over another cattle guard and a turn to the west, or diagonally northwest through the bull pasture.  If we walked, we followed the pickup trail through the pasture because it was shorter.  If we rode bikes, we went by the road because the pasture was too rough for bike riding.  The hill down from our house made for a swift and easy ride to Grandma's, but the up-hill trip home presented more of a challenge.  You felt pretty big when you could ride your bike all the way up instead of getting off to push the bike. In the spring and summer, we would pick wild yellow sweet peas, bluebells and little white and purple flowers to offer Grandma.  On the way home, we would pick more flowers for mom. Occasionally we rode the horse, but it was more effort to catch the horse even going bareback because there were gates to open and close to get there.

We loved going to Grandma's house. She always had fresh cookies: sour cream sugar cookies, soft cinnamon spice cookies, or raisin-filled cookies and a pitcher of kool-aid.  And then there was the candy dish.  We were strictly instructed that we could not ask for candy, but there was no restriction on asking what was in the candy dish.  The result of that question was an offer to have a piece--which we had technically not asked for! If Mom wanted us home, she would ring the ranch phone (a phone line strung across the fence posts between the four ranches) one ring for Grandma and Grandpa's house.  The way each person cranked the ringer gave a clue to who was calling.  Grandma knew it was mom calling for us to come home, so she would send us out the door before answering the phone, telling Mom we were already on our way.

Living close to my grandparents was a special treat in many ways, and  I am thankful for the times that we spent together.

Playground Games

Recess ranks as a favorite part of school for nearly every child. We all had to wear our coats out to recess unless it was 70 degrees or higher, which the teacher on duty enforced vigilantly. Likewise, if there was snow on the ground or it was raining, you could not get off the sidewalk unless you had on boots to keep your feet dry and warm. Each grade had a certain area of the playground to burn off energy before returning to the classroom. A thick layer of gavel coated the playground which provided material to scoop and create perimiters for rooms as we played house during recess.  We also liked to play rhythmic clapping and singing with partners.  These elaborate routines included clapping, crossing hands to meet your partner's hands and slapping your legs in a variety of formations.

  Giant  swings with deep grooves worn by many small shoes dragging swung in high arcs with daredevil children pumping as high as they could to make the swing chains jerk with their weight.  Monkey bars were popular as well, but because girls were required to wear dresses to school, you needed to have slacks under your skirt if you were climbing around and hanging upside down. Girls also played a lot of jump rope, singing songs as we jumped one after another with two people swinging the rope. We tried to outdo each other by how many times we could jump without missing. Girls and boys did not play together by choice--we didn't like the same games in the primary grades.

 What I most remember doing and enjoying was playing jacks, sitting on the cold hard sidewalks bouncing the ball and picking up one more jack each turn or tossing the ball up, picking up the prescribed number of jacks without letting the ball bounce. Another level of difficulty included "Around the World" which meant you had to circle the bouncing ball with your hand before picking up the jacks.  The boys played marbles, so there was some competition for space on the sidewalks around the playground.

By the time fifth grade rolled around, the playground had parallel bars.  Our hands were not used to swinging across the bars, so we quickly got blisters.  These white liquid pockets would pop and peel back leaving stinging raw spots on our palms.  This made writing in class after recess excruciating.  Even with the pain, we kept at it day after day until we had tough callouses and strong arms.

Missing recess because of school work not done or being sick was lonely and depressing.  Having to spend recess inside because of weather meant no one burned off energy, so we were figity all day. Expending the pent up energy from sitting in class working at our desks settled us down for another session of work.  I cannot imagine school without recess! 

Starting School

I did not learn everything I needed to know in kindergarten.  In fact, I did not attend kindergarten.  Because we lived twenty miles from town and the school bus only made the trip once in the morning to take children to school and once in the later afternoon to return the children home, there was no choice but to miss out on the first year of school that all of my classmates were experiencing. The bus, an eight-passenger two-door vehicle that required the front passenger to get out and tip up the seat so others could get into the back, drove into our yard at 7:30 in the morning.  As the youngest of seven who rode the bus, I sat in the middle front next to the bus driver for the 45 minute drive to school.

 I started school as a first grader at Clark Elementary just across the street from the high school in town. The two first grade classrooms were an addition onto the north side of the original red brick two story square building.  The bank of windows along the north side gave a clear view of the high school and the street where the buses came to deposit and pick up students from both schools.  The first graders had an entrance reserved just for them with ample space to help little ones with their snow boots and jackets.  My teacher was a lovely woman named Miss Story whom I adored and looked up to. Years later when I was in high school and had occasion to visit my former teacher, I was surprised at her diminutive stature; time had altered my perspective!

Life at school was certainly different from life at home on the ranch.  At lunch time, we all lined up and marched across the street to the high school cafeteria for lunch.  The cafeteria was on the third floor lined with long wooden tables end-to end.  Each student took a metal tray and slid it down the line for the cooks to fill a plastic partitioned tray with the lunch menu which always included a small carton of milk and a dinner roll dipped in greasy melted butter. On the first day when I sat down with my lunch, I patiently waited for someone to say the blessing as we did before every meal at home.  No one prayed; everyone else was eating and chatting away.  I decided to eat my lunch as well.  We did not have milk from cartons at home.  Milk came from the cow in the barn, brought to the house in a bucket and strained through a cloth into a large jar. Town water tasted funny too.  Ours came pumped by the windmill into a storage tank and then into the house. No one could leave the cafeteria without eating everything on their tray and drinking all of the milk.  Meals like chop suey or a dish of prunes made this a real challenge.

 I learned to read from Dick and Jane readers and began my lifetime of loving books.  I do not have many other memories of times in first grade other than once when I found myself in trouble.  I took Jocko, a monkey puppet that I had been given, to school with me.  Not surprisingly, I was playing with him, entertaining classmates seated close to me.  Miss Story did not appreciate this interruption; I was reprimanded and sent to the corner to contemplate my misdeed.  I was unaccustomed to being in such a situation, and it never happened again.  I was a model student desiring very much to please my teacher and my parents.  Overall, I loved school and found that I enjoyed learning and playing with my friends.