Skittles and All Her Kittens

March 2006

In the spring of 2003, Isaac and I went to a little house north of Hopkinsville. A lady was giving away kittens from a litter of five. The kittens were in a big box in her living room. We wanted a female kitten so Happy, our old tom, wouldn't feel obligated to fight with it. 

There were two little females. One trembled in fear when touched, and the other reached her paw to Isaac and then bit him. Isaac decided that the little biter had personality, so we brought her home and named her Skittles. 

Skittles is spayed now, but she had two litters of kittens when she was a mere adolescent.  During one of the kitten episodes, the babies had grown too large for their box in the house. The weather was warm, so I moved them to a large wooden box on the carport. 

 I glanced into the box one afternoon, and I was shocked to see a fuzzy little alien in there. The kittens were nursing, and a baby rabbit was huddled against them. Obviously, Skittles had acquired the rabbit, and she didn't seem interested in eating it, so I left it there. I didn't know if it would survive if I released it, and I hoped that maybe it would accept Skittles as its mother. 

I looked in the box the next morning, and I was shocked to see that now there were two little rabbits. I surmise that in her condition of activated maternal hormones, Skittles decided the little wild rabbits were actually kittens who needed a home. Never mind that their ears were a bit long; obviously they needed her care.

 I still wasn't sure what to do with the rabbits. They were so young that I was afraid they'd die if I turned them loose. Still, I wondered about leaving them with Skittles. She groomed them enthusiastically, just as she did her feline children but I didn't ever see the rabbits nursing. She wouldn't have minded, but they didn't seem interested. 

After much pondering of the situation, I sought out a recipe for homemade milk-replacer for rabbits on the internet and bought some pet bottles so we could feed the little rabbits by hand. They were flighty, slippery little creatures, but they were hungry. Keely named them Abbot and Costello, and developed a method of wrapping them gently in a towel for feeding. That way, they could shrink into the towel rather than darting forward if they were startled. 

Unfortunately, Abbot died, and then we had just Costello to nurse along. I read that rabbits have fragile bones and I became concerned about the kittens hurting him. They were much larger and they played roughly. We decided to move Costello to a nest of dry grass clippings in the bottom of a large round garbage can in the house. 

Costello was terribly nervous whenever we handled him. He couldn't help it; that's the way little wild rabbits are. I think he became about as tame as a little wild rabbit can be. Sometimes as he drank his bottle, he closed his little eyes and seemed to enjoy it and maybe even dozed a little as I sat very still and held him, bundled in his little feeding towel. 

Soon Costello developed sharp teeth that could sever a pet bottle nipple with a single chomp. I started giving his milk to him in a drinking bottle designed for hamster and rat cages. It had a long metal tube with a metal marble in the end of it. Costello quickly learned to push the marble up just enough that a trickle of milk flowed out of the tube into his mouth. He grew rapidly. 

Soon our little rabbit developed a hearty appetite for clover picked from the lawn for him, and I knew that he could probably survive on his own. One sunny day, I took him out to the hedgerow along the back fence where there was a thick cover of unmowed vegetation, and I said goodby to the little guy. After I released him, he sat still for a moment and then crept away into the tall grass. I couldn't help worrying about him! 

Meanwhile, the kittens had grown too large for the wooden box, so we had moved them to a 6-foot round cattle tank that the kids had used as a pool when they were little. One day, I saw Skittles jump into the tank with a baby squirrel struggling in her mouth. Apparently she had an idea of adopting it like she had done with the rabbits. 

The little squirrel was trying so hard to escape that Skittles was excited by it. She seemed a bit uncertain -- was it a baby or was it a game animal after all? I snatched the wild little thing away from her. It leaped from my hands in a flash, ran into the shrubbery and was never seen again. Skittles was momentarily puzzled where the strange baby had gone -- and then she nursed the kittens. 

Last summer, when Costello would have been one year old, an unusually tame rabbit lived in our yard. He didn't come close to us, but he never ran away or froze in position like rabbits do when frightened. He was quite comfortable even at a 15-foot distance. The lawn mower didn't disturb him much; he just moved out of its way and enjoyed the freshly mowed greens. 

We saw him all summer long, placidly grazing on the clover in one spot or another. Of course we think it was Costello.

Hoping for a Snow Day

 March 2006

As I took Isaac to school this morning, he was hoping for enough snow that school would be cancelled. It brought to mind a silly little thing I said when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade, about this time of the year.

School had been let out for the day, and we students (all seven or eight of us) spilled out of the little schoolhouse with our lunchboxes in hand. It was windy and chilly, and the sky was almost colorless. I announced to the Horner girls in a voice of authority, "Look at that sky! It looks like we'll be getting some snow tonight."

In truth, I wasn't sure what the sky looked like when snow was imminent, but I had heard my dad say things like that, and it sounded good when I said it.

It sounded good because we children liked snow and plenty of it! We hoped for heavy snow so our teacher would cancel school for the day. The snow had to be deep because if the teacher thought she could even get close to the school, she'd call someone on the school board to meet her with a tractor and get her through the drifts to the schoolhouse.

Every chore in ranch life was made a hundred times more difficult when there was heavy snow, so our parents always hoped that it wouldn't snow just as hard as we hoped that it would.

Struggles of an Amateur Pianist

March 2006

God in His wisdom has planned that we don't have many musicians in our church. We do have a very good organist who serves faithfully. When he can't be there, our pastor usually can get a substitute organist, a lady from Clarksville who plays beautifully. But if this lady can't come, Pastor calls me and asks if I will play the piano.

I am not a good pianist by any stretch of the imagination. I had piano lessons when I was growing up, but my talent was never more than mediocre. I have no inborn gift for reading music. It has always been hard labor for me. Similarly, I am not particularly good at reading time -- dotted notes, rests, and such. I struggle terribly with unfamiliar music! Sometimes I even photocopy music and use white-out to remove notes that confuse me.

When I have to play for a church service, I often have trouble with one or two of the hymns. I practice dilligently, but when it's time to play them in public, sometimes I do OK and sometimes I make mistakes. But whatever notes I hit, right or wrong, I play on, the congregation sings on, and soon enough we come to the end. 

Over time, I've had a couple of insights about playing for church. I have learned that several other ladies in our church play the piano a little. I would be happy to let any of them play in my stead, but no one else has ever volunteered. That must mean that they would rather endure my efforts than try it themselves.

More importantly, I realized a while back that nervousness is a self-centered emotion. The piano is part of the music, and the music is part of all the worship that is offered to God during the church service. Obsessing about my fears and imperfections is wrong; I should play the best I can, and God will bless the music. I try to keep that in mind.

Tonight I have to play for the Lenten service. Pastor called me yesterday afternoon and since then, I've been practicing. The hymns are "Jesus, Thy Boundless Love To Me" with the Vater Unser melody, "O Dearest Jesus", "There is a Green Hill Far Away", and "Go My Children With My Blessing".

In our hymnal, the first two hymns are one difficult minor chord after another, but I found easier arrangements in another hymnal. If I concentrate on reading the notes, I should do all right on them. The other two are easy enough. A short prelude, the four hymns, the offertory, and a short postlude, and I'll be done. Yes, I feel a little nervous, but I'll be OK.