My Life As A Midwife
I used to lead two separate lives. In one, I take advantage of my six-foot frame and three hundred plus pounds to earn an adequate living as a bouncer. I break up fights, and occasionally have had to throw a punch or two. I have had my nose broken no less than six times in the last ten years, and my knuckles will never be normal-sized again. I have a minor reputation as being a very tough SOB.
Then there is the other side of life. In this secret life, I serve as a midwife for pregnant cats.
Imagine, if you will, a middle-aged man coaching tired and cranky female cats through the pain of childbirth. I have always suspected that I do this because I was not able to be present at the births of my stepchildren or grandchildren, but that's for my therapist and me to find out.
I can tell you when it started. My first cat, Bacall, had gotten herself pregnant before I could afford to have her spayed and was expecting kittens around my birthday. . I arranged for my friend Janet to watch her and spent that weekend at a conference. Like many meetings that I have attended, there was much talk late into the night, and as a result I had not gotten a lot of sleep. I was tired from the eight-hour drive, and all I wanted was to get home and go to bed. So of course, about an hour before I got home Bacall went into labor.
Now I pause here for character identification. I am an exhausted, surly and totally unpleasant representative of humanity at this point in my life. My first impulse was to go to bed and let Bacall handle the birth by herself. After all, it was a most natural thing and her motherly instincts would kick in, wouldn't they? Of course they would.
So I am sitting on my bed, my favorite blanket under Bacall while I rub her ears and back during labor. She gave birth to four healthy and hearty kittens, two of whom share my home today. I was so pleased with her that I sat up with her half the night trying to get her to eat and drink something. .
And so it began. There have been seven instances of pregnancies in The Cat House since that day in 1995, and I have participated in the births of all 26 kittens. I am a sucker for the whole process, even though I am spending more and more time trying to get companion animal owners to show social responsibility and alter their animals before breeding age.
While living in an apartment in March of 1996, Bacall got out through the clumsiness of my roommate and spent two days away from home. I almost practiced some of my bouncing moves on him to express my displeasure, but was able to control myself long enough to find her and bring her home. In a few weeks, I noticed her weight gain and prayed that she wasn't pregnant again. By April I was sure of it and prepared for the kittens. This time, she was able to do most of the work herself. Of the three kittens born, two went to the roommate who had allowed Bacall out to get pregnant in the first place, which I thought was poetic justice. I had her spayed in June of that year and cured her of her desire to go outside.
Our next litter was Baby's first batch. Baby, as some may recall, was the stray that came to stay with us at Christmas 1996. Her first batch, four kittens born in January of 1997, actually arrived while I slept, but I participated by giving up my thirty-five dollar white dress shirt as the birthing bed. Baby must have know that I only wore the shirt once, and that it was in the laundry basket so I could wash it and wear it to work again. Of course, it could have also been that she just didn't like me. Shortly after weaning the kittens, she was impregnated by a stray we had taken in who was headed for the vet for his neuter in another two days.
When Baby had her second litter of kittens she needed more active assistance. For some reason, she had a harder labor. My wife thought at the time that she was experiencing the cat equivalent to back labor, but I suspected that her quick turn around time in pregnancies was giving her trouble. At any rate, she needed me. Sometimes she would howl pitifully and dig her claws into my arm, and at other times she looked at me as if she expected me to stop the pain. Of the three kittens she bore, one died from complications in childbirth. Another, named Colombo, lives with us and serves as a reminder of the folly of letting your personal companion animals breed. Baby could have very easily lost her life during this pregnancy, and after she was done weaning these kittens she went in to get spayed. After her, we swore that we would not bring in any more kittens to a world where there are not enough homes for them.
Unfortunately, the kittens kept coming because pregnant strays found their way to our doorstep. A calico we called Shan Li came to us when a friend of our son's found her wandering the streets, dirty, undernourished and traumatized. She came to us declawed and pregnant in 1998, and five weeks after arrival gave birth to five kittens we ended up calling The Pile. Four were females we named after characters from A League Of Our Own , Doris, Dotty, Kit and All-The-Way Mae. We named the single male Watson, and ended up keeping him because he developed an eye infection and needed special attention. (This is the excuse we almost always use when my wife and I have fallen in love with a kitten and decide that it can't leave.)
The next pregnant cat to come to our home was another example of the blatant mistakes we made early in our career of rescues. Her name was Tiffany, and she was the daughter of Bacall from the first batch. She had been living with someone whom we trusted to have her spayed, and he failed to do so. In the meantime, he took in a male cat who impregnated Tiffany, and then decided that he no longer wanted her in his home after three years.
Tiffany broke our hearts. She was a very unsocial cat by the time we took her into our home and showed many signs of having been abused by her previous owner. Her pregnancy was difficult, and she ultimately rejected her litter.
Fortunately for Tiffany's three kittens, there was another stray cat in our home who gave birth within twelve hours of Tiffany. Lenore was a tiny cat with a constant harassed look upon her face. After giving birth to her own four cats, she then took in Tiffany's three and nursed all seven to health with some assistance (and feedings) from us. By the time the kittens were weaned, she was exhausted. She was the only cat I ever thought was glad to be spayed. We were able to find homes for all seven kittens, and for the mothers as well.
We finally were able to place Tiffany in a home of her own with an older woman looking for a gentle companion, but there was a period of time that we both thought that she would have to be put down because of our mistakes. (A cardinal rule of rescues that we follow now: make sure that the home you are sending the animal into is a proper environment for the animal. And make sure the adoptees understand that if it doesn't work out that they can bring the animal back.) Lenore, aka Lenny, is living a quiet reflective life in a local retirement home for Franciscan Nuns. The good sisters offer prayers every day for our efforts, and sometimes I think it is the only reason we are able to keep doing what we do.
I don't work as a bouncer anymore, but we took in another cat just a few weeks ago, and she's pregnant. Any day now, probably in the middle of the night (of course) I'll be playing midwife again. I enjoy the experience, but I wish with all my being that I didn't have to do it. I am so tired of looking for homes for healthy cats with nowhere to go. We'll get the kittens altered and their first shots before we start looking for homes for them so we don't repeat our past mistakes and perpetuate the problem. We'll spend a few hundred dollars doing this, and our vet will give us the lecture again about being soft touches. And we'll do it again in the future. As long as there are pregnant cats, I am willing to play midwife.
Brian Baker is a writer and animal rights proponent. He has been published locally and nationally, most notably in Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul. Currently, Baker spends his time working with a local organization (www.safehavenforpets.org) that not only operates a shelter for animals but also does extensive work with feral cats. To exchange correspondence with the author, write to brianpbaker@hotmail.com or bbaker563@aol.com