Mittens the Kitten

This is to pay tribute to a little, black kitten that came into our garden and our lives temporarily. She was a cute ball of fluff who was undernourished but had a perky face and bright, mischievous eyes.

I wasn't sure whether to keep her as we already had a menagerie of two Bali dogs, a rescued Bali cat and two water turtles.  My 7 year old daughter persuaded me otherwise, saying that the only pets she had were the turtles who don't talk to you, nor do much and that the other pets were chosen by her older sisters so they weren't hers.

I was easily persuaded by the pleadingly 'take me, I'm all yours' look from the kitten. When my daughter named her Mittens, my response was "That's a lovely name for a kitten, are you sure it will sound good when she's a cat?"  My daughter insisted that it was the best name for her so we went with it.

Mittens gulped down her food with amazing speed and I had to deal with the inevitable prompt liquid explosion that ejected out of her body....... usually over the bed clothes and floor, which did make me wonder what I had taken on.  Nevertheless, she quickly learned about the litter tray and became more and more curious.

Alas, her curiosity did get the better of her when she escaped the house (after having a very happy time playing in my daughters' bedrooms). Unfortunately, our two Bali dogs took on their natural hunter instinct and killed poor little Mittens. I knew something was up when I went outside to investigate why our older cat was swearing. I was met by a strange silence in the darkness of the evening and the dogs were panting heavily. I couldn't see what had happened but sensed something near the bougainvillea tree. When I approached, I saw a tiny, black shadow - it was Mittens and she was already dead.

In spite of growing up as a butcher's daughter, the shock and denial of seeing this poor, little defenseless body made me freeze motionless.  Although I wished this would have never happened to me, I had to deal with Mittens' dead body, as there was nobody else around to delegate this task to. When my daughters discovered what had happened, I also had to deal with all the tears, denial and disbelief, trying to be brave for my children when I was crying too.  Was this another 'living in Bali' life lesson ? When discussing this sad tale with friends, it seems like I'm not alone in this experience and somehow we move on. This too is the case with other situations that we wish would have never happened to us.

Coincidentally, my husband happened to discuss with me a few days before, that it's ok to be melancholic.  All the hype on positive thinking tends to dispel us from ever feeling sad and to always look on the bright side.  My daughters and I did grieve little Mittens even though she only came into our life for a few days.  In this short time, she brought us happiness, laughter, disbelief and pain which we subsequently reconciled into her going to a good place in the little spot where we buried her under the bougainvillea tree. My 7 year old wrote the following letter to her:-

Dear Mittens,

I hope you are having fun in heaven but I am not so happy now but I do have you in my heart.

I only got a few days with you but I still love you. Love to Mittens.

From Emy xxx

Experiencing sadness, pain and tears is part of life's journey. As Victor Hugo in Les Miserables said:-

"Those who do not weep, do not see."

It's ok to weep, as this is what takes us to a different place of learning, understanding and appreciation, no matter what age or stage we are in life.

Janet

Slow Steps Are Better than Standing Still

Have you ever a feeling of “when will I ever move forward?”

Of late, I’ve been going through a lot of changes which have made me wonder. My two younger daughters started a new school and my 13 year old daughter has just gone to boarding school in England, I’ve moved from a fully furnished to an unfurnished house and I’ve had to do lots of time-consuming, practical tasks such as re-buying all the domestic items of life from knives to wardrobes and everything in between. None of which particularly excites me.

Then there’s the other challenge of getting used to my new home environment.

Two nearby roosters with messed up mental clocks compete against one another over who has the loudest crow.  They start any time from midnight until 6am and very often are still at it throughout the day.

The cat has a new frequent deep, loud meow, almost a wail; as if to say ‘where I am and what am I doing here?’ and our two Bali dogs have an infestation of ticks. Having never dealt with ticks on such a large scale, I’ve been fastidiously plucking out the sucking tentacles of the white bulbous ticks with tweezers. 
Being over-zealous when I scrubbed the dogs down with medicated shampoo, I decided to leave it on them. Shortly afterwards, I heard a snarling scuffle and my children screaming, “Mummy, mummy come quickly the dogs are killing each other.”  They were fighting and biting at each other in a crazed frenzy of shampoo and blood.

Us? Fight? We're innocent, honest!

Taking quick action, I grabbed a hose pipe like a fireman about to extinguish a blazing inferno. The children and I chased the biting dogs around the garden, adding to the noise and commotion. There was carnage, mud and blood everywhere. The green lawn turned a swampy, red/brown colour and left over steamers of toilet roll used to wrap the dead ticks and flush down the toilet were strewn all over the garden. Finally, looking like we had re-enacted the battle of The Somme, we all subsided into a sweating collapsed heap, all of us panting heavily from our exertions.

It’s the unexpected challenges that can often get in our way and make us wonder if we’ll ever move on and at times like this I like to remind myself of a Chinese proverb which a participant shared with me on one of my company’s leadership development programmes:

"It's ok to be slow, as long as you are not standing still."

Rember to enjoy the journey, by definition with life it is definitely about the journey, not the destination.
Janet