Home Spun comic strip #192

I admit being somewhat hesitant to present this week's comics. This strip in particular made me nervous. It left my husband misty-eyed with memories. My father really did let in a stray cat and she really did pass away 2 days after giving birth to six kittens. Sierra was not yet one and we were helping my parents to bottle feed a litter of hungry kittens. I decided it was important to tell because this was a significant moment in our homeschooling journey. Life sometimes hands us lessons, and the lessons are not always simple. It was not easy to explain to my children about the death of the mother cat. They had seen her the day the kittens were born. We think the stress of delivery coupled with her life as a stray was just too much for her.

As hard as it was to explain why the mother cat died, I dreaded needing to comfort them over the loss of the kittens. I tend to be action-oriented in a crisis. It's much easier for me to do something than to sit around and be upset. So I went to the pet store, explained the situation and ended up buying packages of doll-sized bottles and ridiculously expensive kitten formula as the store clerk shook his head at the hopelessness of it all. I gave the bundle to my parents to do what they could. My father became a "mother" to the kittens, but the demands of caring for so many kittens was difficult. My family helped by taking turns with bottle feeding for 6 long weeks. It was definitely a long shot, but life is that important to me. Of the six orphaned kittens, five survived. One, Dustbunny, still lives with us, another lives with my parents and three were adopted. I am proud of my family for pulling together in the face of impossible odds.