Welcome once more to Throwback Thursday.

Recently I’ve been re-reading the newspaper columns I wrote about twenty years (!) ago, seeing if there are any new/old story ideas I can use. I’m so happy I recorded so many things my boys said and did when they were little. Sometimes they make me a little sad and nostalgic, but most of the time they make me LOL.

This story turns out a little dark, but if you’re anything like me, you’ll find yourself laughing with a hand over your mouth because it shouldn’t be funny. But it is. Enjoy.

            There’s a huge advantage of living out of town that few people mention: the frequency with which one is able to study dead animals.  Most wild animals just don’t sit still long enough for you to take a good look at one. Porcupine or badger sightings occur so few and far between that if it wasn’t for the occasional lump of dead animal on the side of the road, my kids would never know how big one of those suckers really is.

            Sometimes, however, it isn’t the wild animals that bite the dust, but a more domestic critter right from our own yard. If someone ever calls our place a farm, I usually correct them, saying we don’t really have any animals besides the occasional borrowed horse and of course, our herd of wild cats. When we moved out here, the previous owners left four cats behind and these cats have made it their mission to propagate their species in an exponential fashion. Unfortunately, we almost never find the kittens when they are born. Once they were old enough however, these wild kitties had no trouble clamoring for their share around the supper dish.

            The latest addition to our feline family was a pair of peaches-and-cream kittens, one of which was smooth and silky, the other very fuzzy, looking like he was badly in need of a hairbrush. The kids appropriately named the fuzzy one Messy and his sibling, Jessie. These kitties didn’t start making themselves known until they were old enough to run off from the kitty dish with a whole chicken leg in their mouth, but we were persistent and eventually could catch them and pet them if we really felt like getting all scratched up. Then the snow came and the temperature dropped and the kitties suddenly disappeared. We suspected the worst.

            A couple of days ago, at least part of the mystery was solved. The boys were outside when suddenly I was summoned at top of someone’s lungs to come to the door. Simon and Gil were by the garage, crouched down, examining something on the ground. An agitated Tim was at the door, saying (and I quote), “Mom, there’s something wrong with one of the kitties! I think its head fell off!” As happens only too often, the kitten had met its maker when it sought some heat from a warm engine. I expressed my sympathies and something possessed me to ask, “Can you tell which one it was?” To which Gil replied, “Yeah. It was Messy.” No kidding.

            There were no nightmares that night about decapitated cats or even tears over a lost kitten. Instead the boys were just wistful that the kitties wouldn’t be around anymore. I don’t want my kids to be hardened to the whole experience of life and death, but I don’t want to shelter them from it either. Maybe these are some of the best lessons our little acreage will ever teach us.