Drainpipe Babies
A very short story repeated, somewhere, every day
April 4, 2021
He was a rough man, judging from the cloths he wore, the physical, outdoor work he did, and in his hard, cynical view of life. They had no children, so his wife had recently adopted a young cat that she cuddled and loved and named Stella. He grudgingly accepted Stella on the condition that she stay outdoors, but he refused to pay a vet to have her spayed.
So Stella roamed their country neighborhood at night checking out the new smells and darting away from sudden, unfamiliar sounds, but then stealthy creeping back toward them to satisfy her natural, youthful curiosity.
Inevitably, Stella came into heat and was soon found by a large, grey feral male cat, with big, wide eyes and enormous jowls. Though initially afraid of him, her own feelings were running high at this time in her young life and so she slowly became receptive to his interest in her.
As her tummy began to expand, her walk turned to waddling and her appetite increased, her owner could see that there would be a litter soon and was doing her best to hide that probability from her husband. But eventually Stella found a side door to the garage had been left ajar and an empty carboard box inside and brought her 5 kittens into the world late one hot summer night.
The husband’s initial reaction to this unexpected addition to the family, began with verbal expressions of irritation and regret, but then slowly turned to anger and a silent determination to get rid of the young mother cat and her brood.
One rainy day, when the kittens were barely 2 weeks old, and while his wife and the mother cat were away from the house, he went into the garage, quickly covered the cardboard box with a faded blue towel, put it in the trunk of his car, and drove to the edge of town. He knew that a old stone bridge ran over a large round, concrete drainage pipe under that narrow, two lane asphalt road so he pulled over on the shoulder just beyond it. Opening the trunk of his car, he picked up the box and walked to a point on the little bridge just above the culvert. He jerked the blanket off the box and pitched its contents over the side about 15 feet above the narrow stream of water that coursed its way through the culvert below.
Three of the baby kittens hit the concrete sides of the culvert and were fatally injured. Their weak cries of shock and pain went unheeded as the husband drove away. But two of the furry babies landed in the cold, flowing water, breaking their fall. Slowly, both managed to instinctively paddle and thrash their way out of the tiny streams swift flowing current and up on to the rough concrete side. Finding each other and huddling together for warmth, their cries for their mother were lost in the huge expanse of the culvert and the woods around it.
Two boys and their younger sister were walking down that country lane after school that same afternoon. As they passed over the culvert, the little girl heard something. Following that sound, she cautiously made her way down the slope of the drainage ditch and peering into the culvert saw the two drenched and shivering baby kittens huddled together. Crying out to her two brothers for help, she picked them up and holding one in each hand, turned to climb back up to the road.
The youngest boy, lost in his own world, ignored her call for help, but her oldest brother, concerned for her safety, turned back toward the culvert, and called out that he was coming. Arriving at the top of the drainage ditch, he could see that his little sister was struggling to climb back up the steep side because she was carrying something in each hand. He made his way down about halfway, grabbed her right arm and pulled her and her two wet furry creatures back to the roadway. Satisfied that she was safe, and unable to understand why his little sister wanted these two half-drowned animals, he turned away and resumed walking toward their nearby house.
The little girl’s mother greeting her 3 children as they came up the driveway, asked her daughter what in the world she had in her hands. After examining the still wet kittens, mom told the little girl to wait for her as she turned toward the house to get a couple of towels. The two of them dried the little bundles of shivering fur with one towel and then wrapped them in the second blue one to keep them warm.
Rescued and safe for the moment, the two drainpipe baby kittens stayed close to each other and let their new family know that they were very hungry. Mother and daughter took them into the house, found a big, folded blanket for them to rest on and then began trying to find something to feed them. With their tummies eventually full and the security of being with each other, they fell into a deep sleep that lasted most of that first night.
The little girl’s mother worked part-time as a cashier in the local grocery store. She knew most of the customers and enjoyed chatting with them as they came through the checkout line. A few days after taking in the drainpipe babies, she was telling a regular customer about the two cute kittens her daughter had found and expressed her hope that she could find a good home for them soon.
The next customer in line that day was the woman whose husband had pitched them over the side of the bridge. She still had the young mother cat and was trying to control her frustration and hurt feelings toward her husband without even knowing what he had done with the kittens.
Hearing the cashier’s story, when her turn came to check out, she asked the cashier when she had found the baby kittens. Instantly, she realized what her husband had done. She told the cashier that she thought she may have those kitten’s mother and asked if she could bring her young mother cat to the cashier’s home that afternoon. The cashier was both surprised and happy to hear that she might have found the baby kittens’ mother. The two women exchanged phone numbers and agreed to get together after the cashier got off work that day.
Putting Stella in a carrier in her car, the woman drove the 10 minutes it took to arrive at the cashier’s house on the edge of town. The little girl who rescued the babies was still at school, so her mother carried the two kittens out to the car as it pulled into the driveway. The young mother cat’s owner didn’t want to let her out of the car for fear she would be frightened by the unfamiliar environment, so she stayed in the care and held her cat with both hands while the cashier handed the kittens, one at a time, through the driver’s side door window.
The wide-eyed and hungry little kittens immediately recognized their mother’s smell and frantically began trying to nurse. Both women were smiling and awing as Stella lay on her side and her two surviving kittens pressed their heads into her belly.
Stella’s owner could not take the kittens home, so the two women agreed that the best course of action was for the mother cat to stay with her kittens. The cashier became Stella and her babies’ new home until the kittens were weened and could be adopted. She promised to have Stella and her kittens spayed as soon as her vet said all three were old enough and healthy enough for that procedure.
The first couple didn’t speak of what happened to Stella when the wife returned home that day, but she soon began searching for a part -time job.
