The Painted Ponies of Partequineus and The Summer of the Kittens

by Peter H. Riddle

  I asked her if Jimmy knew about having to go to the hospital yesterday when we went flying, and she said he did, but he didn’t tell me about it. I guess the plane ride was because he was going to have an operation, and his parents wanted to give him a special treat before he went, just in case he…

  I’m going to scratch that out. I don’t want to think about that.

  Maggie’s kittens are three days old today. They’re getting really wiggly, and they must eat a ton, ’cause they’re always hanging onto Maggie’s nipples. They’re kind of big now, the nipples I mean, not the kittens, although I think they’re getting bigger too, and Mom and I talked about how cats and people are both mammals, which means we can feed our babies milk from our own bodies. The world is amazing, you know? People don’t look anything like cats, but we have all the same equipment, eyes and ears and hearts and tongues and even breasts, which I don’t have yet but I will soon. I’ll need them if I ever have babies of my own.

  Jimmy has a fish tank full of guppies. Did I ever tell you that? And sometimes the guppies have babies, too, only when they’re born Jimmy has to take them out real quick because the mother fish eats them. Gross! He puts them in another bowl where they’ll be safe until they get too big to eat. You wouldn’t believe how small they are, only a couple of millimetres long. But Jimmy says they have all the stuff inside them that we do, all the important stuff, anyway, like bones and eyes and a heart and a stomach and muscles to make their fins and tail move. All that in a little fish that you almost can’t even see. It’s like a miracle.

  Jimmy said something really strange once when he was showing me some new guppy babies. He said that life is the cheapest thing there is on earth. I asked him what he meant, and he said that people can buy life in a pet store or even in Wal-Mart for a dollar ninety-eight. They buy fish to take home with them, and most times they don’t really know how to take care of them, so after a few days they just die. He looked really sad.

  I thought about the baby fish in the bowl, how they wouldn’t have anything to eat or clean water or be safe from their mother eating them if Jimmy didn’t look after them. Then I thought about Jimmy in his wheelchair, how he’s something like the baby guppies, ’cause if somebody doesn’t take care of him, he can’t do it for himself. That made me sad, too.

  Dad doesn’t care about the kittens. He came upstairs to look at them the first day, but he didn’t say anything and just went away to his den, and he hasn’t been back since. He seems kind of sad lately. He’s home almost all the time now, but he doesn’t talk much, except this morning when I was eating breakfast and he came into the kitchen and sat down. He asked me if I wanted to go to the hardware store with him, that he had to buy a new saw for a project he was planning. I haven’t gone anywhere with Dad in a long time, ’cause he stopped asking me when he and Mom started fighting. I should have said yes, I guess, but I didn’t, and he went away from the table without eating any breakfast, and Mom kind of looked at me funny, and I said, “What?” She shook her head and went back to what she was doing, and a couple of minutes later I heard the garage door open. I hurried to the back door, but by the time I got there, Dad was already out the driveway and heading for New Minas.

  Jimmy’s at the hospital. I wonder what’s happening to him right now.

  July 1st

  Hey, Diary!

  Today was Canada Day, and we had a picnic! All three of us! Mom packed a lunch and Dad drove us out to Kingsport and we sat at a wooden table and ate, and after that we bought ice cream cones at the little canteen. The tide was way out, and Dad took me down near the shore line where there’s all kinds of shells and stuff, and we even found a live crab. Did you know they can walk sideways?

  Mom and Dad were even talking to each other, but not like they were mad, and they tried not to let me see that they were sad, even though I could tell that they were. They didn’t talk about anything important, at least not when I could hear them. After we poked around on the beach for a while, we walked up the road to where all the little cottages are built on top of the cliff, and where we could look out over the bay. We kept going until we found a place where the trees grow right up next to the cliff’s edge, and there were lots of bushes and stuff, and even yellow wildflowers, only when I looked really close, the flowers were tigers, all yellow and black, and they were looking at me with their big green eyes, and I hung on to Mom’s hand real tight on one side, and Dad’s hand on the other. The tigers followed us all the way back to the car, and when we got inside and Dad started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot, they were sitting all in a row at the side of the road, watching me.

  July 2nd

  Dear Diary,

  This was a terrible day. I have to tell you, even though I don’t want to.

  It started out really well. We had breakfast together, all three of us like we used to, and after that Dad went down to his workshop - to try out his new saw, I guess - and Mom was out working in the garden, and I was watching the kittens. Later on I heard Mom come back in the house, and Dad must have come up from the basement because I heard them talking in the den, not what they were saying, just a word or two once in a while. But then they got louder, and I wandered out in the hall to listen.

  Maggie came out of the bedroom and went downstairs, and I could hear her meowing by the back door. It was the first time she’d asked to go out since the kittens arrived, which meant they were old enough for her to leave them for a little while, I guess. Mom says mother cats are really smart about knowing what their kittens need, so I wasn’t worried about her leaving them, and I went downstairs and let her out.

  Mom and Dad were fighting again. Not fighting like hitting each other or something, they never did that, but their words hurt just as much. Dad was saying, “What I did wasn’t all my fault, you know. If you’d only been…” Sorry, Diary, but I just can’t write what he said next. Then Mom said something like, “How do you expect me ever to trust you again?” and Dad said something like, “You won’t unless you give me a chance,” and Mom said… Never mind, they just went on and on like that, and their voices got a lot softer and meaner, not louder like you’d expect when people fight. It was like their words were little knives and they were cutting away at each other, and I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I went and stood in the door to the den so that they’d see me and maybe they’d stop fighting.

  They didn’t notice me at first. The room was so full of them that there wasn’t any room left over for me. They filled every space with their words and their anger and their hatred. That’s what it was, hatred, and after we’d had such a nice day on Canada Day and I thought maybe everything was going to be all right again, and now the tigers were back, and they were snarling and gnashing their teeth, and Jimmy was in the hospital and couldn’t come and save me.

  Dad saw me first, and right in the middle of a sentence, something really hateful that he was saying to Mom, he stopped. His face was all red and his shoulders were hunched up, and it looked like he was about to explode. He looked back at Mom and his fists were all balled up, and I was really scared, only instead of hitting her he spun around and kicked his desk chair halfway across the room, and Mom screamed. Dad grabbed his car keys off his desk and ran out of the room, and I ran over to Mom and grabbed her around the waist.

  We heard the garage door go up and then the car’s engine, real loud like always when Dad gets mad like that, and the tires squealed, and then we heard him slam on the brakes, and we ran out of the den to look out the side window, and Dad was climbing out of the car and Maggie was lying underneath it.

  I’m sorry, I can’t write any more right now.

  July 3rd

  Dear Diary,

  I can tell you what happened yesterday now. Maybe everything’s going to be all right after all.

  Maggie’s dead. Dad kept saying he was really sorry, and Mom was so mad I thought she was going to hit him or something, and I guess I was crying something awful, so that finally Dad just went away so
mewhere, I don’t know where, but he took the car and he hasn’t come home yet. I don’t know where he spent last night.

  I was so upset over Maggie that I didn’t think about the kittens right away, but then I did, and I said to Mom, “Who’s going to feed them now? They’ll die without Maggie to take care of them!” She made me sit on the couch beside her and hugged me and wiped my face with a wet washcloth.

  “Can you stop crying for a while so we can talk?” she said, and I tried to settle down, and she said, “Now you have to be very brave about this. We can try to feed them ourselves, but there isn’t much hope that they’ll live, because they really need their mother’s milk to stay healthy.”

  “Can’t we give them regular milk?” I asked her.

  “When I was a little girl,” she said, “I used to visit my Aunt and Uncle on their farm in Bridgetown. They had a big cattle barn and lots of barn cats, and one time when I was there one of the cats was killed in an accident, just like Maggie, and she had newborn kittens too. My aunt tried to feed them. She made little holes in the fingers of a rubber glove, like nipples, and filled the glove with milk so that the kittens could eat, and it seemed to work for a while. But one by one the kittens died, and she told me it was because cow’s milk doesn’t have all the things that kittens need to live.”

  “Can’t we at least try?” I said.

  “If you want to, but maybe it’s best just to let them die now. It’ll almost certainly happen eventually, and it will be harder the longer you have them.”

  I guess I cried a whole lot after that, and I went upstairs to see the kittens, and they were sort of crawling around on the blanket, looking for Maggie, and they must have been hungry. I picked one up and it was shaking all over, and I held it close and it settled down, but when I put it back on the blanket it squeaked in its little tiny voice.

  I made myself stop crying and went back down-stairs. Mom was in the kitchen.

  “We have to try,” I said, trying to sound calm and like an adult. “We have to find out how to take care of them. Somebody must know.”

  Mom looked at me for a long time. I can be pretty determined when I want to. Jimmy knows that. I just wasn’t going to let those kittens die without trying to do something, and I guess it showed on my face.

  “Come over here,” Mom said, and pulled out a chair for me at the table so I could sit down. “There are a couple of things we can do. We can take them to the animal shelter downtown, or to the SPCA.”

  “Do they know how to save them?”

  “I’m sure they do.”

  “But will they? The shelter has too many cats already, and the SPCA probably does too.”

  “Then we can find a veterinarian to take them.”

  “Won’t that cost a lot of money? It’ll be weeks and weeks before they’re big enough to come home again, won’t it?”

  “Sweetheart, we can’t take the kittens back. If they go to the vet…”

  I guess I started crying again. “It’s my responsibility,” I told her. I wasn’t sure why I said that, but it seemed right.

  “I’m sorry, dear,” Mom said. “I can’t help you with this. Your father and I have a lot of things to get settled right now, and I just don’t have time to help you take care of a litter of kittens that will almost certainly die anyway.”

  Then I said something really hateful, and I wish I could take it back, but I really believe it. “I’m just in the way around here, aren’t I? You and Dad never have time for anything that’s important to me any more!”

  I ran out and up the stairs. When I got to my room, the kittens were all huddled together and not moving much, but one of them was crying a little. I knew how she felt. Right then I decided that if Mom wouldn’t help me I’d figure out how to feed them myself, even if I had to buy milk out of my own allowance. I could put it in a spoon and hold them and pour it in their mouths or something.

  Mom came in my room then, but I wouldn’t look at her. She sat down on the bed and watched me petting the kittens for a minute. Then she said, “Hanna, I’m sorry. You’re right. Your father and I have been too wrapped up in our own problems to see the effect it’s had on you.”

  “It’s my fault. It’s because of me that you and Dad fight all the time, and that’s why he got so mad and ran over Maggie like that.”

  “Sweetheart, none of this is your fault.”

  “It must be. He never talks to me any more except to yell at me, and you act like you’re unhappy with me all the time, like I’m always doing something wrong.”

  “Oh, Hanna,” she said, “that isn’t true.”

  I wouldn’t look at her. “I’m going to feed the kittens myself. It’s my responsibility, now that Maggie’s dead.”

  “You’re right, it is your responsibility to try to take care of her kittens, but not just yours. Mostly it’s your father’s, after what happened, but I don’t think he’ll help, and it’s mine too. So we can take them to a vet and see if they can be saved, and if they live you can keep them. Okay?”

  I looked back over my shoulder and wiped my eyes. “Really?”

  Mom nodded to me, and I guess I should have been happy, only it didn’t seem right, ’cause they were my kittens and their mother was killed because Mom and Dad were fighting, and I was pretty sure that was my fault, too. So that made it my fault that Maggie was dead, which meant I should be the one to take care of the kittens, and that’s what I told Mom.

  Mom reached out and touched my shoulder. “All right, if you want to do it yourself, there’s one other thing you can try first.”

  “What?”

  “Go next door and knock on Mr. Harding’s door. Tell him what happened and ask him to help you.”

  “How can he help?” I couldn’t imagine that mean old man would know anything about how to feed baby kittens.

  “He was a veterinarian,” Mom told me. “He retired quite a few years ago. I don’t know if he’ll help you or not, the way he seems to want nothing to do with anybody, but you can ask.”

  “Was he really an animal doctor?”

  “The best one in Nova Scotia, so I’ve heard.”

  “But I’ll bet he won’t pay any attention to me after the way I was rude to him. You ask him.”

  “Sweetheart, I can’t do this for you. You’ll have to do it yourself.”

  “Why?” I was crying again. I couldn’t help it.

  “Just what you told me, it’s your responsibility. And I’m afraid he won’t listen to anything I say. You have a better chance of getting him to listen than I do.”

  “He chased me away before.”

  “I know. But I think maybe he’s a good man, in spite of the way he acts. Maybe you can make him see that you really need him. I’m afraid no one has needed him in a long time. Anyway, you won’t know if you don’t try.”

  I washed my face in the sink and went out the front door. Dad had put Maggie under the back steps, wrapped in a big towel, and I didn’t want to go out that way. I went around the fence and started up Mr. Harding’s front walk. Every step I took, the walk got longer and longer and his house got bigger and bigger. It started to look like a giant face, and the door was a long, ugly nose, with the windows on either side like terrible, angry eyes, the front steps a mean and awful mouth. Just like Mr. Harding’s face. He shouted at me, the house shouted at me, in a great big voice that shook the whole world. “I told you not to feed that cat! I told you not to let it hang around here. People like you take no responsibility. People like you! Like you!”

  And then I was standing on the porch, and I reached up and rang the doorbell, only nobody came. I rang it again, and then again, but I guess it wasn’t working, ’cause I didn’t hear any noise coming from inside. So I pulled open the screen door and knocked on the regular door, twice, real hard, and Mr. Harding came and opened it.

  “What do you want?”

  He sounded mad, just like always. He had on an old pair of baggy tan pants and a faded plaid shirt, and his hair was all messy an
d he needed a shave. His eyes were red and kind of wet, and there were food stains on his shirt and dirt under his fingernails. I tried to say something, but my throat all closed up.

  “Well? What is it?”

  “My cat’s dead,” I managed to say.

  “I’m not surprised,” he said. “I told you to take better care of it.”

  “I did! Only my Dad ran over it.”

  He looked at me for a long moment. “I’m sorry,” he said at last, and he didn’t sound quite so mad any more. But he started to close the door in my face, and all of a sudden there were tigers all over the yard and climbing up on the porch and hanging down out of the trees, all snarling and reaching out for me with their big claws.

  “She had kittens,” I said, real fast.

  He stopped closing the door.

  “Mom said you used to be a veterinarian, and that maybe you could help.”

  “Well, I can’t,” he said.

  I guess I started crying, even though I had promised myself I wouldn’t. He opened the door wider again.

  “How old are they?”

  “Five days,” I said, and he said a bad word under his breath.

  “I wanted to give them milk,” I told him, “but Mom says that won’t work, that they need something like their mother’s milk, only she doesn’t know what.”

  “Your mother’s right. Look, child… What’s your name, anyway?”

  I told him.

  “Hanna, it’s very hard to raise orphan kittens. They have to be fed around the clock. You have to keep them warm. They can’t even go to the bathroom by themselves, you have to help them do it. Children can’t do all that.”