There is a cat running around the farm of Cade's Sunday School Teacher who used to have all of it's lives but unfortunately, after being around Cade, his number of lives dropped drastically. This post is not for the squeamish or those who are huge cat lovers. I wish I could say no cat was harmed in the making of this post but that just wouldn't be true.
Saturday evening our church had their annual hayride at the home of the Brown's, which is where Cheryl (Cade's SS teacher) lives. They actually live on a dairy farm so they have a large number of cats and kittens running around the place. As soon as we got there Saturday evening we spotted a tiny black kitten. It looked to be about 3-4 weeks old and was probably the runt of the litter. It was such a cute little kitten. For the rest of the evening these kittens were running in and out of the barn and all over the yard.
Cheryl worked on a treasure hunt for the kids. Because of illness/weather related issues, Cade ended up being the only kid at the party. The High School/College age kids were asked to go on the treasure hunt with Cade. Since we have a very good group of older kids they readily agreed without any hesitation. We started out on the hunt – Cade, Me, Cheryl, 2 HS Seniors and 3 college aged kids. We made it through stops #1, #2, and #3 without a problem. Stop #4 is where the incident occurred.
At this point it was starting to get pretty dark. Cade read the clues at stop #4 and was getting ready to run to the next stop. He got ready to take a step at the same time one of the other kids said "watch out". Yes, the black kitten was right under Cade's feet. Cade didn't have time to stop his Size 3 Nikes from smashing down on the cat. All of us were standing in sort of a semi-circle around the kitten. We paused for a minute, waiting for the cat to run away. The cat didn't move. Then I hear Cheryl say "oh no". I'm thinking Oh crap, Cade just killed a cat….what kind of an apology works in this sort of a situation? I quickly grabbed Cade and said "lets move on to the next stop". I didn't want him to realize that he just killed a kitten. As we were running away Cade yells "sorry".
We went onto the next stop which was around the corner from where Cheryl and the rest of the kids were inspecting the kitten. I couldn't see what was going on, but it was probably a good minute of two before I heard a cheer go up from the group. The kitten ended up being fine, it may not ever be totally right again, but it is alive.
I laughed and laughed about this on Saturday. I seemed to be the only one laughing really hard about it…not because Cade hurt the cat, but because I think he knocked it unconscious. I'll never forget the gasp that went up from the group when the cat didn't move nor will I forget Cade saying sorry. I think Cade shortened the poor cat's life by several lives that night….and it's only 3-4 weeks old. It still has a long farm life ahead of it. The cat didn't learn it's lesson though because I caught it around Cade's feel later on in the evening. Luckily it escaped any serious injury that time.
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