Animals Welcome

by Peg Kehret

  Years earlier, I had written The Hideout, a book about bear poaching. During the research for that book I learned that poachers often shoot bears and other animals inside our national parks. This had made me furious, and now a poacher who was trying to illegally kill animals right in my own neighborhood made me angrier. Even worse, I had temporarily gone along with the misinformed notion that a wounded bear must be killed.

  Education is a powerful tool. Once I knew that hunting is not legal on this trail and that bears in my county are a protected species, I was prepared to take a stand if I ever saw the poacher again. Animals cannot speak for themselves; sometimes we have to do it for them.

  Two weeks passed with no sign of the bear. Then one morning I found both of my bird feeders on the ground. They had been ripped off the poles that they are nailed to, and I knew only a bear would be strong enough to do that. The next night, a suet feeder that had hung on a fence was torn down, and the suet was gone. I rejoiced to find this destruction because I was certain it meant that the bear had survived.

  The third night I left the outdoor lights on and stayed in my recliner instead of going to bed, hoping to see the bear. I was curious to see if he showed any signs of his injury. Did he walk with a limp? Could he use both front paws normally? All night long, I peeked out the window, waiting and watching.

  He didn’t show up that night. I wondered if the lights made him nervous, so the next night I left the lights off. Every ten or fifteen minutes, I’d click them on but again I saw no bear. He has not been back since. By then it was late November, so I assume that his scavenging for birdseed had been part of his effort to fatten up before winter.

  Black bears are dormant in their dens in the wintertime. They don’t eat or drink, but live off the fat they’ve stored in their bodies. They eat as much as they can in the summer and fall, preparing for their dormant season.

  I often see news stories about bear sightings in the suburbs. Usually the bear is shot with a tranquilizer gun and relocated, but sometimes they are killed. A recent news story told of an eleven-year-old boy who saw a bear in his yard and, fearing it would “hurt his sisters,” he got a gun and killed it. The report saddened me, both for the bear, who had done nothing aggressive, and for the child who now knows what it is like to kill a living creature.

  Ever since the poacher incident, I’ve felt protective of bears, especially any who might live in my area. When the first bear was here for a few days several years ago, I didn’t call the wildlife department, and that turned out to be the right decision, as the bear moved on without hurting anything.

  I made the wrong decision for the second bear (or maybe it was the same bear on his second visit) mainly because I was ignorant of the ways of black bears. I’ve learned about bears since then, and I’ve also learned more about myself. It is always wrong to take an action that goes against my core beliefs. I should have said no to the poacher when he asked to hunt on my property. If I was concerned about Karrie, I could have canceled my trip and stayed home. If I feared that the bear was suffering, I could have asked a trusted friend who respects wildlife to walk my woods with his gun, knowing he would have shot the bear only to end its suffering if it was dying anyway. Even though the bear was hurt, he deserved a chance to get away and to live longer. I’m glad he got that opportunity.

  Two weeks after the bear poacher incident, in the last hour of the last day of that year’s deer hunting season, the same poacher shot a beautiful blacktail deer. Once again, he was hunting on the public trail. Once again, he wounded but did not kill the animal, and it ran on to private property. This time it was a vacant lot, one that was posted NO HUNTING. The poacher followed the wounded deer and killed it. I heard the shots.

  My closest neighbor, whose property is between me and the vacant lot and who shares my love for wildlife, saw the whole incident and called to tell me what had happened. “It’s the same guy who shot the bear,” he said.

  This time, I knew that hunting on the trail wasn’t legal. Neither was shooting an animal on private property without permission, which is what the poacher had done. I dialed 911 and reported the poacher. It was late on a Sunday afternoon. I live in an unincorporated part of the county, where law enforcement officials such as game wardens cover hundreds of miles of territory. I knew it was unlikely that anyone would arrive in time to catch the poacher.

  I don’t know if an official responded to my call or not. If they did, they got there after dark, long after the poacher had gutted the deer and hauled the carcass away.

  It didn’t seem right to let the poacher get away with his illegal hunting. On Monday morning I called the state Fish and Wildlife Department and reported both poaching incidents, the bear and the buck. The person I talked to was horrified that anyone would shoot a bear in this jurisdiction, and was equally dismayed to learn that both shootings had happened on the public trail.

  “Even during a lawful deer season,” he said, “it is not legal to hunt on the trail. Families hike there. People ride their horses and walk their dogs.”

  “I know,” I replied. “I walk my dog there myself.”

  I knew the poacher’s name because he’d given me his name and phone number the night he shot the bear. When the wildlife officer asked if I knew who the poacher was, I had no qualms about passing along that information. He promised to send an enforcement officer to the poacher’s home to speak with, and possibly cite, him.

  Two friends felt I should not have reported the poacher, for fear that he would retaliate, but if I had not turned him in, the illegal hunting would surely have continued. As far as I am aware, there has been no more hunting on the trail.

  The bear has not returned, but whenever I open the cedar bin on my porch to get sunflower seeds for my bird feeders, I look at the teeth marks that remain on one corner of the lid, and I hope he is safe, and well.

  Throwaway Cat

  Much to Molly’s delight, I had a few weeks without any rescued animals.

  I was hard at work on the revisions of Ghost Dog Secrets, and I wanted to concentrate on my writing for a while before I offered to take another foster cat.

  Then my friend Jenny called one morning to tell me that she’d seen a car driving slowly past her house. Curious, she had watched out the window and was shocked when she saw the driver stop the car, get out, open the back door, shove a cat into the street, and drive off!

  “I ran out and yelled at him,” Jenny said, “but he sped away. I couldn’t get a license number, or I would have reported him to the police. I think it’s illegal to dump an animal.”

  “It is,” I said, “but that doesn’t stop people from doing it.”

  Jenny had managed to catch the frightened cat, and had put it in a cage in her yard. Her husband was in the VA hospital that week, and she drove to Seattle every day to be with him. There was no way she could deal with a rescued cat, so she called me. I assured her that I would pick up the cat, take it to my vet to be examined, and bring it home.

  That turned out to be easier said than done.

  I called my vet’s office, told them I was picking up a rescued cat, and asked if I could bring her in for an exam on my way home. That way, we’d get started on any needed treatment right away. They agreed to see her. Jenny’s house is a twenty-minute drive and by the time I got there, she had left for the hospital. The caged cat was in her backyard, with three pink roses lying on top of the cage. Jenny knows I love roses and had picked me a thank-you bouquet.

  The cat, a beautiful fluffy-haired calico with the longest tail I’ve ever seen on a cat, meowed at me as I approached. I decided to call her Rosie, because of the flowers that adorned the cage.

  I had brought my cat carrier and I set it on the ground next to the cage, so I could transfer her quickly. I opened the cage and reached inside for Rosie. She backed away, out of my reach.

  “C’mon, kitty,” I said. “I’m not going to hurt you.” I held my fingers toward her. She pressed herself against the rear of the cage an
d swished her tail nervously.

  My arms were not long enough to reach her. I spent fifteen minutes trying to coax her to come out. When that didn’t work, I lifted up the rear end of the cage until it was so high that Rosie had to move toward the end that was still on the grass. My plan was to reach in as soon as she got to the opening, grab her, and put her in the carrier.

  Instead, when she was almost close enough for me to reach her, she suddenly bolted. I grabbed for her, and missed. Rosie flew out of the cage and raced around the corner of Jenny’s house.

  I rushed after her, but she had vanished. I scanned the yard, the street, the sidewalk, the yards across the street. There was no sign of a cat. I felt sick. How could I have let this happen? Poor Rosie!

  Jenny has a thick honeysuckle bush on one corner of her property, between the lawn and the sidewalk. It’s eight feet by four feet in size, with intertwined branches and leaves that form a thick, impenetrable mass. As I stood listening and looking for the cat, I heard movement from the depths of the honeysuckle.

  I knelt on the grass and peered into the bush. I couldn’t see her, but I heard movement again, and I was sure Rosie was hiding in the honeysuckle. Quickly, I retrieved the cat carrier from the backyard and positioned it beside the honeysuckle. I coaxed. I pleaded. I called. Rosie stayed in hiding.

  Fifteen minutes passed. Half an hour. I knew I should call the vet but that number was not programmed into my cell phone, and I didn’t dare leave the honeysuckle for fear Rosie would emerge and I wouldn’t see her.

  An hour passed. It was a hot day, and I grew thirsty.

  My cell phone rang. It was the vet’s office, wanting to know if I was still planning to bring the cat.

  “I’ve run into a problem,” I said, and explained what had happened. They told me if I could get the cat there before one o’clock, they could examine her but the vet was leaving then to do barn calls on horses all afternoon. I looked at my watch. It was eleven forty-five.

  Because of my increased weakness from post-polio syndrome, I use a cane. I named the cane Alice, because it leads me into wonderland. My cane has cat faces all over it.

  I considered poking Alice into the honeysuckle to nudge Rosie out but I was afraid when she got poked by the cane, she’d run and I wouldn’t be able to catch her. At least when she was in the honeysuckle bush, she was safe and I knew where she was. I decided I needed help.

  I saw a young woman weeding her garden about half a block away. I walked over, keeping a nervous eye on the honeysuckle in case Rosie decided to emerge, and asked the woman if she would help me catch a cat who was hiding in the bushes. She looked a bit dubious, and I can’t say that I blamed her.

  I explained how the cat had been dumped out of a car and that I wanted to take it home and try to find someone to adopt it. “My name is Peg Kehret,” I told her. “I’m a friend of Jenny and Jerry, who live in that house.”

  “Are you a writer?” she asked.

  “Yes. I write books for kids.”

  Her wariness vanished. “My daughter loves your books,” she said. “She’ll be so excited when she comes home and finds out I helped you rescue a cat.”

  She followed me over to the honeysuckle bush. Once again, my books had brought me good luck with a cat rescue!

  I poked Alice into the bushes, and we heard Rosie move. My new friend crouched on the ground, ready to grab Rosie. I poked again, and this time Rosie moved close enough that the woman could grasp one front leg. She held on until I could get a firm grip on Rosie, pull her through the honeysuckle, and put her in the carrier. Both of my arms were scratched from the honeysuckle branches, but Rosie was safe in the cat carrier.

  The next day, I dropped off two autographed Pete the Cat books for my helper’s daughter.

  The vet said Rosie was healthy, so I made an appointment to have her spayed later that week. She moved in to the foster cat room, where she calmed down quickly and made herself at home. As always, my challenge was how to find someone to adopt her. Edgar had the benefit of belonging to Pasado’s, so he could go to their official adopt-a-thon, and I’d been incredibly lucky with Charlie. I was on my own with Rosie, the same as I’d been with Gus.

  Two days after Rosie got spayed, I noticed that her stomach was swollen and red where the stitches were. I took her back to the vet, who discovered that some of the suture material had broken inside, and Rosie had to have a second surgery to repair the damage. By the time she was fully healed and ready to be adopted, I’d already had her for a month.

  I made flyers that said ROSIE NEEDS A HOME, added her picture, and posted them in all my usual places. Rosie had been with me three months before anyone expressed interest in her. The young woman who called told me she was new in the area and wanted a cat for company. She had seen my flyer when she accompanied a friend to pick up the friend’s dog from a local veterinarian.

  When she came to see Rosie, I asked if she’d ever had a pet before.

  “I had two cats when I lived in California,” she told me.

  “What happened to them?”

  “I gave them to my boyfriend when I moved, but he didn’t keep them.”

  “Where are they now?”

  She shrugged, clearly annoyed by my questions. “I don’t know. What difference does it make?”

  What difference does it make? Maybe what happened to her two cats didn’t matter to her, but I was pretty sure it mattered to the cats, and her attitude made a difference to me. There was no way I’d let this young woman take Rosie. I told her I was interviewing more than one prospective adopter, and would let her know if I chose her.

  “Forget it,” she said. “I really don’t want your cat anyway.”

  I held Rosie as I watched the car drive away. “We can do better than that,” I told her. “You are not leaving until you go home with someone who will love you and take care of you for the rest of your life.”

  I’ve never understood how people can think of their pets as disposable. They wouldn’t give away a child because they were moving. How can they give away a cat or a dog? Yet it happens all the time.

  One morning I was sweeping the floor in Rosie’s room when I stopped, staring in astonishment. I went straight to the phone and called Mark Smithberg.

  “You’ll never guess what Rosie did,” I said.

  “What?”

  “She found the other half of the snake skin! Charlie didn’t eat it after all.”

  I can not imagine where that snake skin was in the months between when Charlie played with it and when Rosie also decided it was a cat toy. Gus had occupied the room for four months, during which time I vacuumed often and fished balls and catnip mice out from under the workbench daily. I always clean thoroughly in between cats, and I had done that when Charlie went home the second time, after what Mark called “his vacation at Grandma’s house.” I cleaned extensively again when Gus got adopted. Where had the snake skin been all that time?

  I don’t know where Rosie found the snake skin, but she seemed disappointed when I deposited it in the garbage can.

  Jenny called one afternoon and said, “I have someone who might be interested in Rosie.” A former neighbor had dropped in to say hello. The woman lived alone but had always had a cat, so Jenny had asked, “How is your cat?”

  The woman told her that the cat had died recently, at age seventeen. “I miss her terribly,” she said. “It’s about time for me to get another cat.”

  “I know of one who needs a home,” Jenny said, and she handed her friend one of my ROSIE NEEDS A HOME flyers. When her friend was enthusiastic, Jenny called me.

  “When would she like to come and meet Rosie?” I asked.

  “Are you busy right now?” Jenny asked. “I could come with her.”

  I put a couple of extra chairs in the cat room and brushed Rosie’s fur. Half an hour later, Jenny and I watched as Carol petted Rosie, and Rosie rubbed against her. Rosie sat in Carol’s lap and purred. Carol marveled at Rosie’s long, gorgeous tail.

&
nbsp; I showed her Rosie’s medical records, which included all of her vaccinations, a rabies certificate, and the document showing she’d been spayed. I explained about the second surgery.

  “You’ve spent a lot of money on her,” Carol said, “but you’re giving her to me.”

  “My hobby is rescuing cats,” I said. “It’s no more expensive than playing golf or shopping.”

  Carol borrowed Molly’s carrier and took Rosie home with her that same day. When Jenny returned the carrier a week later, she reported that Rosie is queen of the household, a beloved companion who brings much joy to Carol.

  Jenny had felt guilty about saving Rosie from a life on the street only to turn her over to me right away. It pleased us both that she was the one who found the perfect home for Rosie.

  Breaking My Own Rule

  During most of the writing of this book, I had three pets—Lucy, Molly, and Mr. Stray. We rescued Molly at a campground in Indiana when she was six weeks old. Someone drove into the campsite across from ours, stayed five minutes, and left without their kitten. She finished our trip, and the rest of her life, with us. She lived seventeen and a half years.

  For the final two years of her life, Molly had chronic renal failure, a kidney disease that is common in older cats. She lost a lot of weight and at one point, I didn’t think she had long to live. For a month, I mixed warm water into her favorite kitty-num-num and offered it to her several times a day where she slept. Kitty Room Service helped, and Molly improved.

  She grew frail, but she rolled on the bathroom rug every morning, begging for a tummy rub. On warm days, she liked to be outside for Kitty Meditation Hour. I stayed with her, to be sure she was safe. She always ate some grass, then waited until we were back inside to vomit it up. In her last months, she ate kitty-num-num exclusively and remained adamantly opposed to having any new cats in the house. I honored her wishes.