by Peg Kehret
By the time we adopted Lucy, we had been involved in animal rescue for many years. Lucy was a disaster of a dog when we got her. She had a bad case of kennel cough, and on the way home on the day we adopted her, I discovered she was in heat. It quickly became obvious that she had been abused, as she was terrified of people she didn’t know, particularly men in baseball caps.
Shortly after we got her, Carl came in one day carrying a yardstick. Lucy whimpered, trembled, and hid under the bed. She did the same thing when she saw me with a flyswatter. Lucy weighs only ten pounds; it is incomprehensible to me that anyone would beat her, but that must be what had happened.
She was found running loose by an animal control officer in eastern Washington and was taken to a county shelter for strays. She was one year old. Because she was so fearful, the shelter staff felt she was not adoptable and turned her over to a rescue group that offered foster care. We got her from the rescue group.
It took a long time for Lucy to overcome her fears. She is ten now, and she is a silly, happy dog who gets so excited when she hears certain words, such as walk or treat, that she spins in circles. I say she “does doughnuts.”
Lucy does doughnuts beside the door when I let her out, and she does doughnuts again on the other side when I let her back in. No matter which direction Lucy is headed, she’s ecstatic about it. She jumps on my bed at night, waits while I brush my teeth, and then does doughnuts when I walk toward her. She likes to be groomed, but it’s difficult to comb a dog who’s spinning like a top.
Me with Lucy
Each morning when I say, “Let’s go get the paper,” Lucy acts as if she is the most fortunate dog ever born. Imagine being invited to walk down the driveway and back! What an opportunity! Lucky Lucy! She does doughnuts all the way to the door. Her enthusiasm is contagious, and never fails to make me laugh.
My driveway curves through the trees for the equivalent of a city block. On the return trip, Lucy always has tingly teeth. Because I’m carrying the newspaper, she wants to carry something, too. She often bit off pieces of fern or snatched a small pinecone. Then I began putting a small red ball in my pocket, to throw for Lucy.
She gets excited when she sees the ball and always chases it, but Lucy is not a retriever. She runs fast for about twenty feet, then drops the ball and waits for me to fetch it, and throw it again. If it bounces off the driveway into the bushes, it’s my job to get it back, not hers.
One day I forgot to take the ball along. As I started back toward the house with my newspaper, Lucy danced in front of me, clearly waiting for me to fling the ball so she could run after it. I raised my arm high, “threw” an imaginary ball, and Lucy took off. She ran the usual twenty feet, then stopped and eagerly waited for me to “throw” the ball again. She seemed as happy with the pretend ball as she was when I threw the red one, and it’s much easier for me to retrieve.
If Lucy were a person, she’d be a reader. When we read, especially fiction, we immerse ourselves in a pretend world that often seems as true and satisfying as our own lives. When I am writing a book, I think about my characters as if they were real people. I “see” them in my mind, and sense their feelings. I laugh at their jokes and cry over their sorrows. If they threw a ball, I would chase it.
No wonder I love my dog so much. We have a lot in common.
When we adopted Lucy, I believed we were rescuing her. In the end, she also rescued me by providing companionship and comfort after Carl died. When I come home, she is always overjoyed to see me, even if I’ve been gone only ten minutes. When I had pneumonia, she stretched out beside me on the bed, giving my hand occasional licks of encouragement. She is my loyal friend, always by my side.
Carl and I were both in our early sixties when we built the cabin. Some of our acquaintances were moving to retirement communities, and they questioned our decision to purchase country acreage at that time of our lives. Wouldn’t it be more sensible, they asked, to buy a condo in town?
I have never regretted our choice. If we had not built the cabin and created our sanctuary, I would not have viewed elk outside my windows, or watched the antics of band-tail pigeons, or seen newborn twin fawns. I would not have been here to rescue Buddy, or Mama and her kittens, or Gus, or any of the others. I would never have welcomed Mr. Stray into my life, or stood six inches from a black bear.
Something interesting is always happening here in the woods. This month, it’s a raccoon who ate Mr. Stray’s food and made a mess with his dirty paws in Mr. Stray’s water bowl. I used the Iowa Children’s Choice Award bell to chase him off the porch, and now I take the cat food and water in at night.
First a bear, and now a raccoon. When the Association of Iowa Media Educators gave me that bell, they didn’t know how much I would use it—or for what purpose. Over the years, I’ve won four more Iowa Children’s Choice Awards and received four more bells, but that first one is the biggest and works best for shooing bears and raccoons off my porch.
Curious to see what wildlife activity takes place at night, I purchased a trail camera. It is weatherproof, motion-activated, and takes either still photos or videos. My plan was to set it in a different spot each night, but so much happens on my front porch that most nights I leave it there.
The trail camera is my favorite toy. Some women anticipate the next episode of their preferred soap opera. I wake up each morning eager to see video of what took place overnight on my porch. I have several fine close-ups of Mr. Stray’s nose as he investigates the camera.
I quickly discovered why Mr. Stray’s bowl is usually empty. He isn’t the only one partaking of the cat buffet. The squirrels snatch pieces of dry cat food, as do the blue jays. The jays even eat canned tuna! Dillon, my neighbor Chris’s cat, snacks frequently, as does Woody, a feral cat who was accidentally trapped when a neighbor was trying to relocate a ’possum. Because I’d had one hundred percent success taming stray cats and finding homes for them, I let the neighbor release Woody in my cat room.
Huge mistake! Woody climbed the walls, going up and down like a bungee jumper. Pictures crashed from the walls to the floor. Items on countertops scattered. Woody tore through the room like a wildcat, which is exactly what he was.
He eventually settled on top of the highest cupboard, coming down at night to eat. I know now that he should have gone straight to a spay-neuter clinic and then been released.
Woody spent six weeks in my cat room before I deemed him untamable. I couldn’t catch him and when I brought the trap into the room, he stayed on his cupboard, not even coming down to eat. I had no choice but to turn him loose, but I felt terrible to let him go without having him neutered.
I worried that he would fight with Mr. Stray, but video shows the two of them together with no problem. Woody lives in the forest but is never seen in the daytime. If I didn’t have the trail camera, I wouldn’t know he’s still here.
Then a new feral cat began hanging around. He, too, only came at night, loudly announcing his arrival by yowling. If I turned on the lights and looked out while he was there, he ran off. I called him Spook.
After he’d been here a few weeks, I decided to do the trap-neuter-return with him. I retrieved the trap from the attic, activated it on my porch, and draped a towel over
the top.
When I looked out on the third morning, I could tell the trap contained a cat. Expecting Spook, I lifted the towel, and there sat Woody! I was up early that day, so I dressed quickly, loaded the trap in my car, and drove to a spay-neuter clinic that takes feral cats without an appointment. Woody got neutered and had a rabies shot. He stayed overnight at the clinic and then spent six more days back on top of the cupboard in the cat room, to be sure his incision was completely healed before I let him go.
As I opened the door for him, I felt lucky to have had a second chance with Woody. This time as I watched him leave, I knew he would never be responsible for litters of unwanted kittens.
Meanwhile, I had continued to set the trap for the elusive Spook. The
day after I released Woody, the trap got sprung in the middle of the day. When I lifted the towel and looked in the trap, Mr. Stray looked back! I would not have been more astonished if I’d found a baboon in that trap.
I put Mr. Stray in the cat room and began trying to tame him. Progress was slow. After two weeks, I still had not touched him, although he no longer hid when I entered the room.
I made an appointment with my vet to have Mr. Stray examined. Heidi helped me coax him into the carrier and Dr. Wood agreed to give him gas so that the exam wouldn’t be so stressful for him. Once he was asleep, Dr. Wood invited me to come to watch.
My first question was, “Is this really Mr. Stray, or is it Ms. Stray?”
Her answer was a huge surprise. “It’s definitely Mr. Stray,” she said, “but he has already been neutered!”
I was temporarily speechless. Finally I said, “Then he must have been someone’s pet.”
She had already scanned him and found no microchip. “Perhaps someone did for him what you did for Woody,” she said. “Maybe he was trapped, neutered, and released.”
I nodded. That would explain his aversion to the trap during the first years he was here.
Mr. Stray’s new house
The feral cat clinic that neutered Woody takes the tip off the left ear of each feral cat so that they can be released immediately if they’re ever caught again. Mr. Stray’s ear had not been tipped. Perhaps that practice was more recent.
Mr. Stray tested negative for HIV and feline leukemia. He did not have ear mites. He got a flea preventative. He was wormed, had his toenails clipped, and got vaccinated for rabies and distemper.
While all this was happening, Dr. Wood said it was okay for me to pet him. Happy tears pooled in my eyes as, at long last, I stroked Mr. Stray’s soft fur.
When he awakened, I brought him home to the foster cat room. He seemed glad to be in familiar surroundings, but when I checked on him an hour later, he hissed at me—the first hiss since I’d had him inside.
He never got any tamer. If anything, he withdrew more. He hid under a workbench or back in a corner all day, hissing if I came too close. I set up the camera in his room at night and watched as he batted a catnip mouse and a Ping-Pong ball around. He ate and used his litter box only at night.
I spent hours sitting in the cat room, reading, hoping he’d get used to my presence and move around while I was there, but he never did.
I loved knowing that Mr. Stray was safe, but I also knew that he had been happier when he was outside hunting mice and rolling on the brick path in the sun. Four weeks after his trip to the vet, I opened the door of the cat room and let Mr. Stray go out.
He didn’t bolt as Woody had. He simply stepped calmly out the door and picked up his old life right where he had left off the day he got trapped. Now he’s back on the porch, sleeping in his heated house, and waiting for me to bring his meals. We still have our conversations.
I believe I did the right thing in letting him free, but I hold close the memory of the day that I got to pet him. Because he was sedated, he didn’t purr, but I hope he felt my loving hands anyway.
I Wonder What’s Next
At the end of a talk I gave recently at a children’s literature festival in Warrensburg, Missouri, I took questions from the audience, most of whom were students in the ten-to-thirteen age range. One girl asked, “How old are you?”
Teachers usually roll their eyes at this question, but kids are often curious about my age, and I don’t mind telling them the truth.
“I’m seventy-three years old,” I said.
To my surprise, the audience began applauding! They clapped and cheered, and I had a hard time settling them down. I told them, “Don’t cheer for my age; that isn’t any accomplishment. I had no choice about growing old. The hard part was writing all of these books.” Then they whooped some more.
Several years earlier, at a similar conference, a child had asked how long I’d been married. Carl was with me then, so I pointed him out to the audience and told them we’d been married for forty-five years. The kids whistled and hollered that time, too. Afterward, Carl insisted they were cheering him, for putting up with me all those years. He may have been right.
Anne, holding her dog, Otter, and me with Lucy
Readers sometimes ask how long I’ll keep writing books. Most people my age have retired. Financially, I am able to retire. Physically, I really should retire. But mentally, emotionally, I am nowhere near ready to call it quits. Writing is not a typical job; it is a way of life. Writing a book is challenging and exhilarating. I like both the process and the results.
I believe that the work I do is important. When a parent or teacher tells me that, because of my books, a child has learned to love reading, I know I’ve made a positive difference that will last long into the future.
Helping animals is also a way of life. An animal rescue is not so much a one-time event as it is a mind-set, a willingness to get involved and to commit time, energy, and love to any needy creatures who happen to cross my path.
Through my books, I try to impart my belief in the sanctity of life. I hope to help readers expand their natural love for their own pampered puppy or cuddly kitten to include empathy for all living creatures.
Now that I travel less and no longer spend many weeks each year doing school visits, I lead a more literary life filled with books, study, and time to think. When I sit on my garden bench, watching the birds and making sure Lucy stays out of trouble, I am restored by my peaceful surroundings. I feel privileged to care gently for my small patch of Earth and the critters who share this space with me.
When we moved to the cabin, we hoped to spend at least ten years here. Carl got only five. I’ve now been here twelve years and plan to remain for the rest of my life. However long I’m here, the animals will always be welcome.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to:
Buckley Veterinary Clinic for providing quality care for all of my rescued animals, as well as my own pets.
Rosanne Lauer, extraordinary editor, animal lover, and friend.
Ginger Knowlton of Curtis Brown, Ltd., who is efficient and supportive, and who writes e-mails that are always fun to read.
Anna Umansky for handling so many details with competence and good cheer.
Regina Castillo for copy-editing expertise, Irene Vandervoort for designing a perfect jacket, and all of the other talented folks at Dutton Children’s Books. It is an honor to be a Dutton author.
Christine Pittman for caring as much as I do about all animals, and for helping me in numerous ways—including the delivery of fresh eggs from “the girls.”
Vicki Taylor who photographed many cats for my rescue flyers, and always says yes when I need a favor.
Special thanks and huge hugs to everyone who adopted one of my rescued cats.