Nine Lives

One day as I was driving through the courthouse, I glanced over and saw the sun hitting this outbuilding just right. I quickly pulled over, rolled the window down and snapped a picture or two. It looks a little off kilter, but that's not unusual for my pictures. Or me.

Once upon a time there was a Chesapeake Bay Cat named Bianca. Bianca was a very loving outdoor cat.

Also, once upon a time there was a woman called Chesapeake Bay Mother, who was the female equivalent of Dr. DooLittle. She loved animals. She talked to the animals. She saved baby birds. She pulled on the side of the road to rescue turtles from being hit by cars. She teetered atop a ladder to return a baby raccoon to its mother on top of the pump house at the barn.

Chesapeake Bay Woman, who does like animals, always thought her mother was a little over the top when it came to how much she cared about the animals. Sometimes it seemed as though she cared more for the animals than she did for people.

One day Chesapeake Bay Woman noticed that Bianca the cat wasn’t coming with the rest of the outdoor cats to eat every morning. Two days went by. Three days.

On the fourth day, Chesapeake Bay Woman asked her mother, who lived next door, if she had seen Bianca. No, she had not. Chesapeake Bay Mother became visibly upset. She knew something bad had happened if Bianca had been missing for four days.

Chesapeake Bay Woman had already decided that either a hawk or a dog had killed Bianca. After being gone for four days she surely was dead.

Chesapeake Bay Mother, however, began a search in earnest. She scoured the yard. She looked in the barn. She looked around the shoreline. She looked in every possible place.

But she would not give up.

On the sixth day, Chesapeake Bay Mother went to the neighbor’s house and asked if she could look around their yard along their shoreline. Off in the distance she heard something. She followed the sound to the next house over, which is abandoned but used by a waterman who sets gill nets and crab pots for a living. There are piles and piles of empty crab pots in the yard.

There, in a CRAB POT*, was Bianca. She’d been trapped there for six straight days. No water, nothing to eat, trapped in a crab pot. CB Mother reached in and retrieved her.

After that, Bianca and Chesapeake Bay Mother lived happily ever after.

Chesapeake Bay Woman learned a few lessons from all this. One, miracles do happen, and you shouldn't give up hope when all seems lost. Two, I probably ought not to make fun of my mother’s obsession with animals. So I promise not to call her Dr. DooLittle anymore.

Well, at least not this week.

The End.

*A crab pot is a maze of wire that usually contains a piece of bait (which may also be attractive to a cat if the pot is in the yard). The crab is lured inside by the bait and is too confused by the wiring to figure a way out. (It seems simple, but it isn't if you're a crab. I empathize, as this "It oughtta be easy, but it isn't" theme is the story of my life.)

Evidently a crab pot may also be used as a cat pot. Who knew?