Read Online Cherished by Barbara Abercrombie - Free Book Online Page B

listened in the dark to the sounds of a mother cat giving birth and the tiny cries that followed. I lifted my quilt and watched the last wet black kitten slip out of her body and onto my pink sheets. I marveled at the way she licked each kitten dry. She cared for them with such natural confidence. How did she know how to take care of her kittens? I wanted to know. I wanted to know because I couldn’t understand why it was so hard for my mom to take care of my brothers and me when we were small. And how was I ever going to learn how to be a mother?
    My mom was also an animal lover, but in a different way. She collected animals — cats, chickens, sheep, goats, geese, cows. You name it, and she had one running around the property at one time or another. We picked up a curly black puppy one summer at a gas station outside the airport. Mr. Wiggly didn’t live long. Most of my mom’s animals didn’t have particularly long lives — it was often some misfortune or an infection that waited too long before she took the animal to see the veterinarian.
    I WAS TEN YEARS OLD when I went to visit my mom one summer in Washington State. She was living on a dairy farm with 180 cows and her new boyfriend, Roger Short. She was engrossed in her New York Times crossword puzzle at the table when I asked her if I could go down to the calf barn. Shenodded her head and said that I might look for a few goodchicken eggs while I was there.
    The black-and-white calves shoved their heads through the wood slats of the stalls and stared at me with their big polished eyes. “Roger likes to wean them young,” my mom had told me. I decided to do a little exploring around the barn. I walked past the room filled with burlap sacks of corn and grain and peeked into several empty stalls. At the end of the walkway, there were two tall white buckets with lids on them, the plastic kind that painters use. They looked out of place to me for some reason, like maybe they were set down there and forgotten. I pried the lid off the bucket closest to me.
    I was not certain if what I was seeing was right or true. Kittens. Piled up to the brim. Clean white fur. Brown, black, tan, orange. Small paws with fleshy pads as soft as apricot skin. Wiry tails. Tiny pink noses. Whiskers, as fine as fishing line, almost transparent.
    I pushed the lid back on. I guessed that there were more than a dozen piled up in there. I pried open the other bucket only because I wanted it to be something different. But it wasn’t. One all black, one striped orange, one smoky gray, more colors underneath. Soft triangle ears, thin as potato chips. I wanted to stop staring but I couldn’t. A small calico kitten was lying across the top of the heap. Its eyes were closed, but the shallow part of its belly moved — barely — up and down like it was in a deep sleep. I wanted to touch it, but I was afraid.
    I ran up the hill through the wet grass and opened the screen door. My mom was at the table with her crossword puzzle, her coffee, and a cigarette.
    â€œWhy are all those kittens in the white buckets?” I asked.
    She kept looking at her crossword puzzle like she was just about to figure something out.
    â€œOh, that,” she said with a frown. “You weren’t supposed to see that. Roger was supposed to dump them.”
    I waited for her to say something more.
    â€œI’m sorry you had to see that, darlin’. It’s the way of the farm here. There were just too many kittens.”
    â€œWhat do you mean too many?” I asked.
    â€œThose were feral kittens, wild and inbred — just the ugly ones. Believe me. I can tell the inbred ones right away. Their eyes are wide-set and slightly askew. Their heads are oversized.”
    â€œBut how did they die?”
    My mom got up from the table with her ceramic coffee cup and walked into the kitchen. I could tell she didn’t want to listen to my questions.
    â€œChloroform is what