What we save, saves us

May 05, 2023

Kittens are born with their eyes and ears sealed. They can not see or hear. But slowly over the hours and days, their ears and eyes open. The world they have known only through touch and smell is replaced by a reality infinitely more varied and vibrant. Perhaps it is frightening at first, but imagine how it must be when the colors and music of life are revealed, a new world discovered, the old world of silent darkness left behind.

Three years ago, the pandemic was just beginning, there were fires in the streets of my beloved hometown, Minneapolis, and I was adrift, anguished by my inability to do anything to help anyone including myself. Then I found a day-old kitten in our barn, abandoned and mostly dead. I warmed her back to life and started bottle feeding her, which with kittens that young requires around-the-clock vigilance. Through this act of service, I found a tiny corner of hope in all the chaos.

That kitten only lived a few weeks. She never seemed to be thriving, but she was still making progress until one day she wasn't. Perhaps it was her rough start, perhaps she was born with some genetic code that made adulthood an impossibility. Either way, I was thankful for her short presence in my life; she was a gift that carried me through a hard time. And it was not necessarily something I ever wanted to do again.

This week, our friend, Claudio, who is visiting from Italy, found another abandoned day-old kitten in the dirt of the corral amidst the shuffling feet of our two milk cows and their calves. It was so tiny Claudio would have mistaken it for a bit of fluff except for its wailing. He picked it up and brought it to the house.

Unlike the kitten from three years ago, this baby is full of the will to thrive. How he ended up in the corral we will never know, but after a fruitless search for the mother, I pulled out the canister of powdered kitten milk replacer I’d saved in the freezer from the first kitten. Of course, I’d saved her tiny bottle too. As soon as this new kitten got a taste of milk he stopped crying and settled down for a long drink, and that's been the rhythm of my days and nights ever since.

The first night of feedings, reluctantly pulling myself from slumber, I questioned my sanity though. Does the world need another kitten? Do I really need to lose this much sleep for a tiny creature that very likely won't survive even with my devoted care? (One source I found said abandoned neonatal kittens have a survival rate around 50%.) "I’m three years older, and a whole lot wearier than I was the last time I did this," I thought to myself.

But once again, I am learning a lot. I’ve named this kitten Leone, Leo for short, because that is the Italian word for Lion. I think of little Leo crying into the darkness of his sealed eyes as he lay in the corral — crying out to be saved. I think of him learning to drink from a bottle, learning to trust the touch of a giant creature he can neither see nor hear and is nothing at all like the furred, four-legged mother who should come to him. That's quite a lesson in courage and faith from a very wee beast.

Meanwhile, are there other, more important things I could be doing with my time instead of bottle-feeding Leo? Actually, probably not. In the quiet hours after midnight, or just before dawn, I am reminded again of the joy found in measuring my breath against the breath of an utterly vulnerable creature. Of letting myself slow down to listen for the tiniest imaginable purr coming from the tiniest imaginable softly-striped throat. Even if it is only for a short time, I am thankful for this unexpected sweetness. Turns out and I am not weary as I thought — and in saving this little one, I am getting saved a little too.

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