Heather Barton

Okay so we had cats.  And we had chickens.  And at one time, during Disney’s run of Charlotte’s Web I had a rat, who I named Templeton.  He was a big black and white rat who we kept outside and he was very tame.  But he did die, inexplicably, after owning him a couple of months. 

And we had rabbits.  At first my brother and I each had a pet rabbit.  We cuddled and played with them but after a while they got too big and they were just petted in the cage, fed and watered.  Then my mother tried to breed them.  She got a breeder box, read up that you had to put the female into the males cage (or the other way… I forget) or the female would fight him, etc.  I think she may have had success with my female rabbit Sunflower, so she decided to get a pair of huge meat rabbits.   And each rabbit has its unique story.

One day, Sunflower died.  While I was crying over the death of my pet (even though I wasn’t particularly attached to her) my mother who was in RN school had gathered my brother, sister and several of the neighbor kids and was using the opportunity to do a little dissection class for them.  So I was in the house “waaaaaa, Sunflower”  while my mother was in the backyard, “Now this is the small intestine.”  She drags it up and out the body.  “And this is the large intestine… no Erin don’t poke that, it’s the colon.”  Gasps and squeals of “ewww” as my sister does just that and the stench of rabbit poop spreads.

And another day one of our rabbit’s eyes began to bulge in its socket.  Penny-Pinching Paul (my father) is SO not going to pay for a vet visit so we speculate as this eye bulge grows that the poor rabit must have a brain tumor.  By now my mother is employed as a PNP in a Pediatrician’s office and she brings home some morphine from the office and shoots up the rabbit with enough to take out a dog and gently leaves him in our small patch of grass to die free.

My brother comes home from school and calls my mom.  “Mom, what’d you do to the rabbit?”   She explains and he laughs. 

“Mom, rabbit ain’t dead.  Rabbit is STONED, totally stoned..  Flying high!”

Not only did the rabbit live, whatever was bulging his eye disappeared.  Although after that he did have a crazy habit of running around his cage so fast he would run up the sides for a full circle.  Mother could only assume someone at the office had tampered with the morphine.  Us kids just assumed she had accidentally discovered a cure for cancer.

The last rabbit story is the tale of the Baby Bunnies.

My mother finally successfully bread the big white meat rabbits.  So while I was in high school we had 6 of the cutest little baby rabbits and we would visit the and cuddle them every day.  Ezzy and her yearly kittens had died and we missed the cuddly baby stuff.

Then one day we came home from school and the baby bunnies were gone.  We queried my mother who informed us she took them to the butcher because she wasn’t raising ‘cute’ rabbits she was raising MEAT rabbits. 

Oh we soooo harassed her about that. 

Two weeks later we have fried chicken.  My brother says, “Mom, this is funny tasting chicken.”

She replies, “That’s because its rabbit.”

And we all know what she means, its the baby bunnies.  My sister runs screaming from the room.  My brother announces to my mother, “your sick” and leaves the table. 

And me.  Well, I continue eating after I tell her,  “Tastes a lot like chicken.”

Monogamy is a weird institution.  Almost as strange as Marriage to me.   Why and how did it develop? 

My friend Kim claims this, “Marriage is the male trying to OWN a womb.”  Of course she’s in the middle of mediating a divorce with her Pisces husband of 22 years and 5 kids.

Culturally its been mostly about women needing someone to bring in some meat while she’s stuck with the little ones…. because she’s breastfeeding them and its hard to kill a mammoth when your carrying an infant you have to stop and feed every two hours.

So we needed their help during the baby years and they got sex out of it and a variety in their diet.   Then farming came along.  And two men can do the same amount of farm work as probably 4 women.  So we weren’t really “helping” them as effectively as another man could.  Ah… but in comes the dowry, which was usually land or money.  And bam… we’re worth the investment.  And he’s doing the majority of the hard labor while we’re doing “hard labor” of birthing and raising the kids, plus baking, canning and other stuff.

And when the kids are grown… why don’t they leave?   Even when the women start to resist having sex… why don’t they leave?   Or when one or both parties are unhappy… why don’t they both just call it quits or at least go out and get happy with someone else?

Twice when I’ve brought up the interesting concept of Open Marriage the male response was, “It’s not that I’d be jealous, but I don’t want to miss the sex I’m not having.”

Baffling!   Neither are assuming they’d also be getting other sex.  They were just concerned they’d be missing the current sex.  They’d be willing to pass on other sex in case they MIGHT (although might not)  get the sex at home.

So I’ve been studying this new strange phenomenon in confusion.  Yes, I know there are plenty of males who don’t think this way… but I’m realizing this is the monogamous sub-species.   This is probably the species that stayed with the female and bred consistently… passing on this trait.  And this sub-species was probably favored by the females.

And I bet this worked out great.  Because for a male to be successful enough to get a “wife” he was usually 10 to 15 years older than her.  Assuming she survives all the children, he’s usually dead of a heart attack by the time she hits her sexual peak.

And that’s when the non-monogamous species comes in.   That free male who’s determined never to “marry” who doesn’t settle down with one female.  HE’s something she can now play with.  Or she can play with the young males of the other sub-species knowing what while they’re waiting until they’re successful enough they still have physical needs she can toy with.

Yes, Cougar’s have been around FOREVER people.    They just purr not roar.

When I was growing up we had one of the coolest cats in the neighborhood.  He was a white and tan long hair’d un-fixed male and he was “the” stud on our block.   My mother caught him hanging around our house mostly starved one day.  His fur was so knotted he could barely walk.  She caught this wild cat and clipped him and bathed him. 

As an adult when I remember this story I’d look at her aghast.  You caught, clipped and washed a WILD cat?!  Were you on valium!  “I had sturdy gloves,” she replies.

The point being she also fed him and he completely adopted us.  We called him Cinnamon and he fit right into the family.  Although he never boinked Ezzy more than twice because only twice did she ever throw a calico and combine her coloring with his and you got calico.  

Cinnamon was mostly an outside cat who just loved being petted.  Especially his belly rubbed.  Like a dog he loved it sooo much, he’d lie there and let you rub his belly.  And if he was sleeping he’d pretty much let you do whatever to him.  To get him to “play” I used to tickle his toes and smack at his paws until he’d crack and eye and try to take a swipe at me.  After all, I was just another annoying kitten.  But it was fun to test my reflexes on him and he never used his claws.

Cinnamon would disappear for weeks sometimes and then appear, clipped and fat with a little blue bow in his fur and we would harass him for hours while he tried to get the bow off.  We often wondered who he “sponged” food from on his rounds.    And he fought his territory well.  I know I heard it ALL the time!

Twice he came home with big gaping dog bits out of his fur.  I mean BIG.  So big that my mother who was getting her RN degree contemplated trying to sew him up.  You could see the thin layer of skin holding his insides in… the bite was that deep.  But she delayed and delayed and he licked and rested and before we knew it he was healing it fine on his own.  He did that twice.

He was never fixed, never got shots, never had his claws clipped and never got a bath after that first one.  And we would all have looked at you like you were crazy if you suggested we “brush” the cat.  Like he’d let you!  He also never saw the vet, you know… ’cause of the money thing.

Lord only knows how old he was when we got him back when I was around 6 but when I came home from college one summer I noticed while he lay sleeping in the sun, the flies were swarming around him.  Sure enough a trip to the vet showed his kidneys had failed and he was gently put down. 

But boy he had a great run as a cat.