ANIMALS AND THEIR YOUNG

I wanted to tell you about the experience we had with our cat and dog in growin their young. I fellt that the best way of doin doing so is by copy the stories out of my book ‘From the Promised Land to the Lucky Country’, which is available on www.amazon.com No. 1419633074.

Our cat 'Pooss"

One day, the kids find a very hungry looking black and white stray cat, amongst the trees at the back yard. She has a badly healed and ugly looking injury along one of her back legs. Taking pity on her, they adopt her and name her ‘Pooss.’

Pooss becomes pregnant, and her first-born is an albino with practically no hair. She nurses it for a couple of days, till she delivers two more. Then, she disappears with the albino and returns without it.

Pooss turns out to be the best mother I have ever seen. She instructs her kittens in the ways of a cat, teaching them to hunt, walk in a line, and take their turn while she encourages them to jump down from high places. She is not shy of reprimanding them when they dare step out of line, and spanks them or puts them in the corner when they deserve it - only to lick them afterwards. And you know, she never read a book about how to bring up her young.

Our dog Tara

… Tara has started digging under the clinic building and is taking all the sand out of there. We are worried the building will fall over if she continues this way, and the children are working hard returning it. Yet Tara does not stop. She is determined, leaving us no option but to succumb and hope for the best.

The building does not collapse, and Tara has her den. Once she enters, she refuses to come out, and in there she has her pups. However, she needs to be fed and we need to know what’s going on. So the children are taking turns crawling under the building. A day passes, and nothing happens. The following day, we have our two pups and think that’s it, but Tara is not coming out. We increase her feeding to about five times daily, with meat, milk and cheese in big amounts, and she finishes it all up. A day later, she has another couple of pups, and every time the children go under the house, they find some more. At the end of four days, Sharon crawls out very excited,

‘I have counted ten or eleven. But I’m not sure. Its difficult to see.’

Gill goes under the house, counts, and thinks there are eleven, but is not so sure either. Now, all we can do is wait and see.

At long last, Tara comes out and urinates for about half an hour and returns to her den. She has no more pups, but we have a tribe.

Tara stays under the house for some more days feeding her brood until she thinks they can venture out. Now, we can see their progress. We notice she does not care who feeds and who doesn’t. She has eight active tits for eleven mouths and it is not enough. Therefore, we make sure to rotate the pups and see the little ones are not disadvantaged. Each time one of the bigger ones falls asleep, we pull a little one from underneath the heap of pups, and put it on top to suck at a vacant tit. That way we lose none.

Eleven pups to look after are a lot, and Tara has not a minute’s peace, so she institutes an imaginary line of demarcation the puppies are not allowed to cross. Each time one of them dares to try, she opens her mouth over its head, shakes it and roars. The little one then cringes and disappears as fast as his little legs will carry him.

Even though still very young, you can already see their individual characters...

If you have a animal story, why not share it with me.

Renate

Artist, poet and the author of

'From the Promised Land to the Lucky Country'

To look inside my book Click here

To see more of my book click on this link

http://www.promisedland-renate.com