Frances and Chester next to the kitchen stove which had enough room underneath for a cat or two to sleep during chilly days.
"Fred!"
“What?”
“She’s got one half inside her. What do I do?”
“Pull ‘er out!” Dad’s voice boomed from the upstair bedroom. He was still in bed, although the sun and Mom had been up for some time.
Mom paused at the bottom of the stairs.
“Guess I can do it with my rubber gloves on.”
I was like Dad—I didn’t want to go down there, either. Since Tiger died, Frances was the one feline on the whole farm who had the run of the house.
A few minutes later, Mom hollered upstair again.
“It’s dead!”
“Throw ‘er out!”
Dad didn’t want any part of the medical procedure. He was too attached to that cat, even though he should have helped. For years he had assisted in the birth of many calves in the stable. He knew exactly what to do, but he didn’t want to face Frances or do anything that would hurt her.
When I thought it was safe, I went down to the kitchen.
“How many did she have?”
“Three survived, and they’re all Maine coons!”
The antique roll top desk, left behind by the previous owner, dominated the office next to the kitchen. It was a tiny room with beadboard walls and a row of built-in beadboard cupboards that hinted of the room’s former use as a pantry. On top of the desk sat a cardboard box with the opening facing a pile of farm bills—the spot Frances had picked to have her litter.
The day before I had filled the box with soft rags and carried it and the pregnant cat up the wooden ladder to the hay mow in the barn. Then I raced down the ladder for my escape only to have the cat leap from the mow to my shoulder, piercing my shirt with her claws. She wanted nothing to do with the barn. Dad said it was probably because she knew the male barn cats might eat her litter…her first.
“They must be sleeping,” Mom said, peering into the office. “After I took out the yellow tiger, Frances looked so weak. I warmed up a little milk and mixed in some cod liver oil. She drank it right up.”
I tiptoed between the swivel chair and the radiator and peeked inside the box. The short-haired money cat was curled around three balls of fur: a gray tiger, a second yellow tiger, and one with gray and silver swirls.
Then I herd a sniffing sound. Penny, our German shepherd, was checking the air.
“No! You don’t come in here!” I said. The office didn’t have a door and I had to train the dog not to go in. She lowered her head, turned around, and looked back, once, to make sure I was still looking.
The office desk, with its bills, bank statements, and farming correspondence, became a nursery. Dad still had to go in there to make telephone calls. But he always cut the conversations short and tiptoed back out.
A few days later, Mom determined it was time to move the family to the unheated back room—what some would call a summer kitchen—where the kittens could run around. Frances wouldn’t have to worry about them falling off the desk into the waiting mouth of the dog.
First, Mom moved Frances away from the box. I moved the box, with the kittens inside, to the kitchen table. After Mom put Frances down, the cat leaped to the table—something she had never done before—and grabbed one of her kittens by its hind end. The kitten squealed and Frances dropped it back into the box. She turned her head and tried the other end, behind the kitten’s ears where its fur was loose. With the kitten’s body swinging back and forth between her jaws, Frances leaped down to the floor and back to the office.
I carried the box with the other two kittens out to the back room. Their mother, with the third kitten still hanging, soon appeared.
“Shut the door quick!” Mom said.
A corner of the back room was blocked off with a piece of plywood leaning against the gray cupboard that was as old as the farm. The trim around the top of the cupboard was the same as the trim on top of all the windows and doors in the main house. Between the board and the sturdy cupboard, the kittens had a safe haven to play and tumble.
Dad was disappointed that none of the litter looked like their mother with her black, brown, and orange fur in no particular pattern. Her kittens, however, had long, thick fur like Chester, their father.
After the kittens were weaned, the gray tiger went to a friend’s farm but later escaped to the woods, pregnant. The yellow tiger and the two-toned gray coon were adopted by Dad’s cousin in Woodland. They lived in a farmhouse and grew larger than either of their parents.
Frances was never allowed to have another litter--too much stress for my father to endure. And the old roll top desk returned to business but was never quite the same.
From time to time, Frances would leaped again onto the bills and receipts, sniffing the air. Turning around and around, she would lay down in the middle, purring loudly, treading on the papers, and inviting any human within hearing distance to join her in a time of love and remembrance.
We would stop working and join her, and for a brief time, the office was transformed in our minds and hearts to the joy of birth and delivery, once again.
