I wish I had it on video!

I wasn't sure what it was when it first breeched my threshold of consciousness. A squeaking swing? A peeping bird? A distant child?

It was, in fact, a tiny unhappy kitten. Mewing and exploring on shaky legs a cluttered side porch. The yellow furball didn't run from me but was protected by a tangle of chairs against the old wooden shipping crate that I should have moved to the shed ages ago. I keep thinking that a glass top on it would make a great coffee table.

We have been petless for a month or two, since we had to put poor blind and deaf Oostanaula Oopsy Daisy the Cocker Spaniel down. We need to keep it that way. Our lives are just not the sort that a pet would enjoy.

I decided to call Sheila at work to steel her against the onrush of maternal feeling that would, I knew, wash over her when she saw the thing.

It didn't work. She came right home.

When I took her onto the porch to check on the wee critter, it scuttled behind the crate. I decided to walk outside the porch to shoo the kitten toward Sheila, while my bride took the more direct approach, leaning all the way over the big crate to see the kitty on the opposite side.

I wish I had it on video.

As she leaned across the crate, one of the wooden slats that formed its top exploded upwards expelling a calico missile that grazed Sheila's arched body on its trajectory off the porch.

I suppose the furry mom must have entered the upturned box by way of the same loose board before the nativity of the sextuplet (not triplets as erroneously first reported) felines. How in creation that one yellow sibling had escaped the crate, I can't imagine.

After my palpitations eased a bit, I began to shake all over again as Sheila and I leaned against one another weakened with laughter.

I wish I had it on video.