Published October 14, 2010 
This is yet another excerpt from my life with JR. What can I say? Just the memory of this horrible event makes me wonder. How do I go on living this life? It’s challenging and funny!
Many years ago…when my kids were younger and we were living that life of hell nightmare in the travel trailer. We had cats. Many cats…too many to remember.
I also had a little girl… a tender hearted little girl…especially towards animals. In fact we were all very compassionate when it came to animals. JR in his own special way.
One day this tender hearted little girl…well she wasn’t so little …maybe in middle school…she brought home the cutest little kitten. She found him abandoned in town at school. Not one to ever leave an animal in distress she brought him home and thought he would just mix in with all our other cats, JR would never notice! She was right! JR got home for the weekend and he didn’t realize this particular little kitten wasn’t born into our herd of cats. The little kitty fit right in just like he was a member of the family.
A couple of weeks later I came home one day and JR told me that he had run over one of the cats. When I asked which one and he told me it was a kitten… my heart lurched at the thought. When I questioned him about which one he was annoyed trying to describe it. I frantically looked around for the new kitten. Realizing it was gone…my heart sank with the thought this was the kitten he had apparently run over. Asking him what he had done with it he promptly replied that he had buried it and he motioned towards the other side of the fence.
Quickly I told him the truth about the kitten and remarked that Jenna would be home soon. He told me just to play ignorant…we would just act like we didn’t know the terrible fate of the little cat. Knowing my daughter… this would probably be for the best…so I agreed.
As soon as she got home and began to feed all the animals she started looking and came to us to ask if we had seen it. Going with the plan…trying to protect my baby from needless heartache…I lied and told her that no…we hadn’t seen it. She looked and looked for it…she called and searched for the little thing everywhere.
In a few minutes I walked up to JR and my daughter deep in conversation. Listening to their discussion I realized that traitor was confessing to his sins and telling her the real story about the little kitten. My daughter started laughing and telling JR that he was lying. JR was adamant about his story confiding that yes indeed he had run over the kitten and had buried it across the fence.
My little girl laughing says, “JR, the kitten is right here!”
Sure enough…there was the bedraggled little cat…fresh from digging himself out of his dark and supposedly final resting place. Buried alive by ”you know who”! Up from the grave…!
So if by chance I ‘m ever missing…you know where to check. I fear for my future!
Published September 1, 2010
A few years after making the move to the country while living in our little house on the prairie we experienced a significant life challenge. JR had cardio-vascular disease and several years after a major heart attack and angioplasty he had bypass surgery. This was just a prelude of health issues to come but this particular incident was a little unforgettable. It is ingrained in my mind and every time I think of it…well let’s just say…I’m amused…it makes me laugh!
As miserable as you could possibly be in an 8 X 30 foot travel trailer with three kids and a neurotic obsessive compulsive spouse…we had other issues…many issues. We all love animals…all kinds of animals! My youngest daughter has always loved animals when she was little it was stuffed animals but as she got older she went for the real thing.
We had the usual dogs and cats but we also had pigs, goats, sheep, and rabbits.
Our neighbors in town…who will remain unnamed at the moment…coerced convenienced us to take their old cat “Mama Cat” with us when we moved to the country. They assured us she was much too old to bear children! Not…that cat had dozens of litters! She was a real floozy and she was wild…her kittens were wild…so for years we had an abundance of cats. They were beautiful cats all black and white! There were probably at times at least 30 cats running all over the place out here!
They wouldn’t really let you pet them…but we always fed them well and if you were to drive up in our driveway they would all come running. Hoping for a meal! Many a friend and neighbor were frightened when out of nowhere a herd of small sets of eyes came leaping and bounding towards their car or truck in the dark of night!
Once evening I went out to feed them and they all came running. We had an old battery stand that JR painted a lovely turquoise color and it was the perfect place to feed the cats. It was off the ground and had two tiers…plenty of room for all the cats. You could just sprinkle their food all across both tiers and there would be two layers of black and white cats happily eating their supper!
On this particular night just before dark I sprinkled food on the top and then leaned down to scatter it on the bottom tier that sat about six inches off the ground. The cats were all right there to begin eating the moment I sprinkled the food. As my arm swept across to scatter the food on that bottom tier I was shocked to see a little skunk that blended right in with all the cats. I almost touched him!
Little “Pepe La Pew” was happily chomping the cat food right there with them! It kinda took my breath away for a moment until I realized he didn’t seem to be bothered by me…so I just took my chances and kept right on with the feeding. Every night that little skunk would be there to eat. He would even come up to our back door when I would throw some meat scraps out to the cats every once in a while.
JR didn’t quite know what to think about all the animals. He wasn’t accustomed to all the ways of life in the country. He didn’t understand the three little jackrabbits our dog found in the pasture after he mowed up their nest. Our little Sheltie, Jody, just wouldn’t calm down after finding them…she barked outside our house until we came and followed her to a find each baby rabbit. We ended up bottle feeding them until they were big enough to take to the ranch and turn them loose in the pasture.
He thought our little Basset mix, Roscoe, had killed a possum in the yard when he went outside to find the wet little body motionless and still on his side on the ground with his mouth open and his tongue hanging out. Now Roscoe wouldn’t hurt a fly…he loves all animals. We had to watch him or he would grab a baby kitten from time to time and take them to his dog house where he would almost lick them to death. He just found the possum and carried him around a little until the possum went into its natural protective state of playing dead. JR thought I was crazy when I scooped him up in a shovel and put him on the tailgate of my truck and drove him up the hill and gently laid him in some tall grass. The next morning I had to take JR back to the same place to show him the possum was gone.
He held a flashlight while I crawled underneath our porch to drag out an armadillo from under the stairs. He even made me carry it to the back of our truck so we could take it up the road and turn it loose.
He always calls me outside when he sees a snake to identify it and I have to make sure he doesn’t shoot …or maybe attempt to shoot some harmless little snake that is crawling around in a flowerbed or the garden.
And the little skunk…the only thing that saved him from a wretched murder at the hands of JR was the fact that our yard would have smelled to “high heaven” for days if he killed him. It just drove him crazy that I would feed a little skunk!
But I knew JR had come full circle the day he went walking… recovering from quintuple bypass surgery and an implanted cardio defibrillator. I was outside working in the garden and looked up to see JR walking up the road oblivious to the fact that he was being followed by our menagerie…marching behind him in a straight line…
Joe and Sebastian, our Bull Mastiff/Golden Retriever Mix dogs…one black the other white…Petunia and Penelope, our two black pot-bellied pigs, Jingles and Buttons, the two black and white Spanish goats, and about 20 black and white cats!
It was a sight to behold…and I’m still laughing…years later!
