Heather Barton

I’ve almost always had pets.  I don’t know if I’ve had them because I’m tactile and I love touching or I’ve become tactile because I always had pets.  But both are true.  I am incredibly tactile (I LOVE to touch things) and I’ve always had pets.

The first pet I had was a black and white female cat from the pound.  I was about 6.  She wanted to be an inside cat and my mother wanted her to be an outside cat.  She clawed the screens trying to get in and then got the final word in by getting nocked up one time when she was forced to be outside. 

She had her kittens on my bed.  While I was in it!  Truly a fascinating and eeww experience to a 6 year old girl.  She had one all black kitten and one all white kitten.  There could have been more but I don’t remember.  We promptly kept the black kitten, gave the white one to the older neighbors across the street and Blackie (as she was called) sadly went back to the pound due to the screen-clawing.

Hey!  It was the Sixties!  Peta didn’t exist… and remember this is the woman who later killed chickens.  (wait… that’s Chicken’s part three… well, you’ll read it later.)

My little black kitten was named Esmerelda after the mother-in-law on Bewitched but we called her Ezzy… because I’m six!  Ezzy grows into the cat my mother can handle… happy to be outside, loves dry cat food, short haired so no shedding and lets us kids do whatever we want to her.  My sister carried her by her upper chest, legs dangling all the time.  Even when Ezzy was pregnant… which was every season because for some reason my parents NEVER fixed her.  Knowing my father, money was the reason.

So I know intimately all about the feline birthing process and the joys of having baby kittens in the house was always part of my life.  I also got to learn the responsibilities of getting rid of those kittens.  My parents would drop us off in front of the Ralphs grocery store with our box of 4 kittens which said “free kittens” on it.  And my brother and I would pester everyone going in and going out “Do you want a kitten?”  It never failed by the end of the day we would walk away with just an empty box.  And so began our career as kitten pushers, because Ezzy gave birth every season which was at least once a year and we had her for oh about 10 of those years.    She eventually died moving her kittens from the garage to the neighbors backyard…where apparently she didn’t know they had a dog.  We did save at least one kitten who six months later committed suicide by car.

See why motherhood is important!

Ezzy did one other really cool thing.  One year for Christmas we got a wrapped present from one of my mother’s eclectic La Leche League friends.  It was obviously a board game and we set it aside for Christmas morning.  Ezzy sat on the box for the whole week from the time we got it until the time we opened it.  She’d come off for food and maybe to poop but my mother swears she never left that box.  Remember Ezzy is an all black, long slinky cat.  When we opened the box it was a ouija board.

My mother freaked and quickly exchanged it for a Game of Life board.    Spooky!

So in the mini-farm saga of my mother’s hippie version of my growing up years we left off at the arrival of the 100 baby chicks.

They were quickly transported to the built coop of my mother’s friend, Karen Flinders.  And they quickly became sick.  The vet pronounced them sick with a virus that made them not want to eat so they would starve to death. 

Undaunted my mother and Karen began a two family regime of force feeding food into each chick.  Everyone took shifts and did their part, either to catch a new chick for the adult to feed or transport the fed one to a new area and try to keep these areas separated.

My mother said they lost about half.  When they were older and well enough we took our share home to our house where Mr. Flinders had built us a long coop.  It was an incredibly well thought out chicken coop.  An adult might have to stoop but a kid could walk mostly upright inside.  Either end of this long rectangular coup had double-decker egg laying boxes with ramps for the chickens because the boxes were about 3 feet off the ground.  In other words, easy human height to open from the outside to retrieve eggs daily. 

The new chickens were added to the original six, one of which turned out to be a rooster and we had our group.  A motley crew for certain.  The original six were the classic Leghorn chicken (picture Foghorn Leghorn, white chicken, white eggs).  About half of the others were what’s known as Buff chickens.  Large (although not as large as the Leghorns) fluffy light brown feathers chickens which laid brown eggs.  Pretty common looking.  Ah, but they were balanced out by the South American breed called Aracana.  Mostly dark feathered birds but they always had incredibly individual markings.  And they laid blue/green tinted eggs.  We even had some Banty chickens, littler than the others but feisty.

And then they all matured and the males began to crow.   This is when I remind everyone we are smack dab in the residential area of Burbank.  The noise is NOT appreciated.  So, first we figure out who’s doing it and we pack them up to the vet.  Because my mother has heard of this surgery called, “De-crowing”. 

The vet says he’s never done it but he’s willing to learn if she’s willing to accept the possible results (death!) as he tries.  She’s got a surplus of chickens so she agrees… since he’ll do it for cheap while he figures it out.  After the sacrifice (death!) of several roosters he finally gets the hang of it and she’s left with several males who now cannot crow.

Ah, but THEY don’t know this.  So it is a source of great amusement to bring over our friends and say… “Watch this!”   The rooster would strut about, flap his wings, stretch his neck out and go “huh, huh-huh, huh-huuuuuuuh!”  and think he’d accomplished something.

Hmmm… sounds like some men I know.