Break-in

Last night Slinky tried to break into the screened-in porch again. She hears the scoop of crunchies that we dispense to Rififi and Orangina, and now comes immediately running, her tail low and protective against the grass as though she's stalking something. At night I watch her press her face against the screen door, watching Rififi as she eats her kibble. Apparently, she and Rif had a little showdown over the food and ended up ripping yet another hole in the screen door. Dan patched the hole this morning, and bought some extra-strength wire mesh to cover the rest of the porch screen.

Slinky loves and hates us at the same time. She looks at us while crouched low aganst the stones, and meows one meow right after another.

"Do you think she's trying to tell us something?" I ask Dan.

"Yes, but I'm not sure what. I'm not even sure she knows."

We both agree that she's completely conflicted. She knows that she's afraid of and repelled by us, and as a feral cat, she acts as feral cats do: running away, hissing repeatedly. Yet there's some sense of domesticity lurking somewhere in the back of her mind as well: something that remembers how to eat from a bowl, something that's pulled to a silky high-pitched voice like a thread. Slinky knows the squeak of doors and the slap of screens. In her eyes, you can read her own embarrasment of being pulled back to this earlier domestic stage.

Slinky's kittens have picked up all of the fear, but none of the inner conflict. They dive underheath the porch, between the boards and the side of the house, whenever I stand up or round the bend too quickly. But they also play in plain sight underneath the Jacob's Coat roses, pawing after mosquitos and no-see-ums, tottering over each other's backs in the sun, stalking their mother's tail with wide eyes that are still kittenish blue.

It's Slinky, it's Slinky

We've started calling the mother cat "Slinky." It's not a dignified name by any means, but as a descriptive moniker, it fits the bill. Slinky walks in a permanent, well, slink: her tail tucked neatly between her legs, her back long against the ground. She'll look us right in the eyes, but will run away if we even take a deep breath or open a door suddenly. The key with Slinky is this: no sudden movements or sounds.

Slinky brings her kittens out to nurse by the roses in the backyard. She's dug an underground area for them to live in the earth beneath the porch. Looking through the slats of the bamboo shades, I can see them lying in the sun, the kittens little more than dandelion-heads of fluff against their mother. The kittens' eyes aren't open yet. They're in what my friend calls "the larval stage."

Looking at the new arrivals, it's hard not to feel a mix of happiness and sadness. Who doesn't love kittens, right? They're adorable, even if I can only watch them from afar. But the bigger question is: what are we going to do about these kittens? I watch them, and all I can think about is them eventually getting bigger, multiplying, making more and more and more.

In the beginning

A month ago, our landlord mentioned, "Just wanted to let you know ... there's a feral cat that's been living underneath the porch for a while now. We fed her while we lived there -- she's pretty skittish, but doesn't cause much trouble."

The cat went basically sight unseen for a while, as cats often do. Dan and I shook the bag of crunchies for her occasionally, just to see if she'd come to us. No dice. For the most part, the silver cat would remain hidden until the evening, then wander around to the porch and let out low moans to our cats, Rififi and Orangina, in the night.

A few weeks ago, I saw the silver cat when I went out to clean the pollen out of the pool. She was sketchy, walking swaybacked and heavily, with a waddle that made me wonder whether she was pregnant. I tried to approach her, and she let out a low, gutteral growl and ran underneath the porch.

I knew I had a bad feeling about this.

Now it's a few weeks later, and I'm out cleaning the pool again, and I see not just the silver cat, but more. Two new kittens, barely fluffy, almost still slick from birth. One is grey and one is black with speckles. They're nursing at the silver cat's side.