Dear Andrew,
I hope you are well and happy.
I enjoyed our conversation on the phone last night. I really liked hearing about your new fish tank. Sometime, when you have Mommy or Daddy’s phone, would you take a picture of your fish for me? I’d love to see them.
Even though Pop-pop and I are so far away from you — over a thousand miles away! — and I miss you terribly, you are in my heart.
Here at our Mountain Home, Pop-pop and I have three new kittens!
This yellow one’s name is Rascal because he is really a rascal!
Rascal loves for us to hold him and pet him and when I put him down, guess what he does?
He bites my ankle! That little rascal! He thinks he is the only one we should pet!
Rascal, being the biggest one of the litter, is also the bravest. He was the first one to let me hold him without spitting and hissing at me. When the kittens were little I kept them in a kennel. Rascal was the first one to venture from their kennel when I opened the door. When they were big enough, I took them around to the cat room, where they will live from now on, and Rascal was the first one to find his way the whole way around our house to the patio, where we sit a lot of the time.
Second biggest is Spitfire, and just as his name implies, he is a spitfire!
Spitfire was full of spit and hisses when he was little — look at those claws, would ya! Often times Spitfire got Rascal riled up, even when it wasn’t in Rascal’s nature to hiss and spit at me.
I call Spitfire a white-faced tabby, even though he has white socks on too. That means he has white feet. But I was a grown up woman before I knew that a cat with stripes is called a tabby.
Of the three kittens, Spitfire is the one who likes to be held and petted the least.
Spitfire is also the second bravest. Once Rascal appears, I know Spitfire won’t be far behind.
The smallest one of the bunch is Feisty.
Feisty is the only girl and being the smallest, she has had to fight her brothers for all the food she’s ever had.
In the animal world, they are not very good at sharing. In the animal world, the biggest and the strongest one of the litter gets as much food as they want and what ever is left over, the others can have. Unless, they fight for it. If they are smart and clever and really hungry, they can sneak in and get some of the food and that’s what Feisty has had to do.
Andrew, Pop-pop and I live in the country now.
And in the country we have lots of critters, including mice. And sometimes they come in my house. Do you know how I know that?
“Because you see them?” you guess.
No, I didn’t see them, but that was a good guess. Mice come out at night and are very afraid of people, so a lot of times you won’t ever see them. But what I did see was their droppings — that’s just a nice way to say that I saw their poop.
“How do you know it was mouse poop, Mimi?”
Well, Andrew, that’s a very good question.
In the animal world, different animals have different kinds of poop, just like they have different kinds of foot prints. When you are old enough, and you go hunting with your daddy, he will teach you all those things.
But I have mice in my house. I don’t want mice in my house. They eat my food and make their beds in my walls. I don’t like to have to kill things, but they can not live in your house or in mine.
Another thing I don’t like is I don’t like to use poison. So I went to the store and I got some of those old fashion spring traps. I put some peanut butter on the spring release of the trap and I put it under my kitchen sink. In the morning when I looked, I had a mouse!
Do you know what I did with that mouse?
“Put it in the trash can?” you guess.
No. I took it out to the cat room and I waved it around Rascal and Spitfire and Feisty and only Feisty reached out for it. I opened the trap and let the mouse fall to the floor and Feisty grabbed it, and sunk her teeth into it, and she pulled it close to her, and she started growling — fiercely!
“Stay away!” is what she was telling her brothers. “This one is mine!” Then she ran away with it and found a spot where she could eat in peace.
That’s one nice thing about trapping mice like this, it makes a meal for another critter! A kitten critter in this case!
I set a trap every day for a week and I caught four mice! I think Feisty got tired of mice by the time I caught the last one because she didn’t want it, but Spitfire did. He took it and he growled a keep-away warning to the others, then he ran to find a place to eat his mouse.
It has been a few days since then and I have not caught anymore mice.
I go out and sit with the kittens a couple of times every day. I have a ball attached to a stick with a piece of string and I play with the kittens. When they get tired of playing with me, they play with each other. They are so much fun to watch and in the next picture, Ginger is watching them play.
Ginger loves the kittens and wants to play with them but she doesn’t know how. I guess cats and dogs have different ways of playing.
When Ginger plays with Itsy, she nips at her and keeps nipping at her until she gets so mad that she chases her. When Ginger nips the kittens to get them to chase her, they just get afraid and run back into the safety of their cat room.
Ginger will spend hours and hours sitting with the kittens if I let her.
Look at this guy, Andrew. Do you know what it is?
“It’s a bug, Mimi,” you say and you would be right. It is a bug.
And this bug was in my house. Again, I don’t like to kill things if I don’t have to and that includes bugs and spiders too. What I do is I pick them up and take them outside, away from our house and I set them free.
This guy was in my house and I knew what kind of bug he was and I knew he wouldn’t bite me, so I picked him up.
He was afraid of me and ran out of my hand and fell on the floor. This kind of bug does not have wings; he doesn’t fly. When he landed on the floor, he landed upside down.
Click! went the beetle. He’s a click beetle! He clicked and flew up in the air a couple of inches and when he came back down, he was on his feet. He tried to run away, but I caught him. I rolled him over onto his back just so I could hear him click again as he righted himself. It made me smile and I did it again and again.
“Look Mike,” I said to Pop-pop. “Look at him click.” I rolled the beetle onto his back one more time and he just laid there. He wouldn’t click! He wouldn’t do anything!
In the animal world, if an animal can’t get away from something that scares them, they sometimes play dead. Opossums are good at this and sometimes people will call it, “playing possum” but I didn’t know that bugs did it too!
I took him outside and set him on an old tree stump. After a while, when Mr. Click Beetle didn’t feel threatened anymore, he clicked himself over and took off, never to be seen again.
Pop-pop asked me to tell you that he says, “Hello, Andrew!”
Until next time, don’t forget that we love you.
Lots and lots of love,
Mimi and Pop-pop and Ginger and Itsy and Molly and Macchiato and Rascal and Spitfire and Feisty! Love from all of us!! And hugs and kisses too!!!!
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