Danny, Cinnamon and the Kitten

Hi, it’s me again, Danny the Dog. Today, I want to go into more detail about my friend Cinnamon. She lives down the street and we visit most mornings. But she has this thing for cats. I don’t mean as a normal dog would have a thing for cats, like you and me. She likes them! I know, I didn’t believe it either until I beheld a mind-boggling incident with my own eyes.

I must admit there was a time, in my younger days, that I hung around with cats. Well, they were actually kittens. My human, whose name is Andrew, brought home a kitten one day and before you knew it, the damn thing was grown and had a litter of six, and shortly after they were weaned she disappeared. And guess who took over looking after the little monsters? I got no peace during the day because they would follow me around everywhere I went in the yard or inside the house. In those days, we lived in a house with a dog door, so I could come and go as I pleased. At night, the kittens would crowd me. One of them, Blackie, slept on my neck every night! But eventually they grew up and started doing whatever it is that cats do and I went back to being a dog, not a surrogate mother.

Now, what I am about to tell you is true, I swear it on Lassie’s grave. I was over at Cinnamon’s house and we were in the yard sniffing around, at least I was. Cinnamon had her nose in the air and it was twitching a mile a minute. I gave a sniff or two, but didn’t detect anything of interest, so I went back to a fascinating scent over by the corner of the house.

When I next looked up, Cinnamon was gone. The yard is fenced in, so I thought maybe she went into the house. But it was funny that I didn’t hear her human come and get her. I must have been engrossed more than I thought with the scent I was following. I think it was a raccoon. My human was in the house also, but I have him trained well enough by now that he lets me pursue my delights without too much interference from him.

So I’m scampering around the yard, running hither and yond. Sniffing this and that when who do I see outside the fence, but Cinnamon! She trotted over to the far corner, got down on her belly and squeeze under the fence. I didn’t even see that escape route. If I had, I’d be long gone. But then again, I wasn’t thinking of running away because Cinnamon came up to me, and she had a kitten in her mouth. At first, I thought the kitten was dead, but Cinnamon was holding her gingerly and the kitten didn’t seem to mind. Then Cinnamon did an extraordinary thing. She gently put the feline on the grass and put her big paw on it, to hold it in place.

I was thinking, “How nice, a present for me.” But she readily disabused me of that notion by licking the damn little thing. She was cleaning it! Just then, Andrew and Cinnamon’s human (her name is Maggie) came out of the house. They had been in there doing what humans do when there is one female and one male involved and they are alone. I don’t even like to think about it.

Maggie walked up to Cinnamon and said, “Oh no, not again!” Then she turned to Andrew and continued talking, “She did this a few months ago, she has this thing for kittens. She wants to adopt them. The cat you saw in the house, Roscoe, she brought home. I had to walk the neighborhood trying to find where he belonged, but I never did find out. So Cinnamon and I acquired a new member to our family.”

The upshot of the whole story is that Maggie never did find out where Cinnamon snatched the latest kitten from, whose name is now Fuzzy. Sometimes Andrew and I go over there and spend the night. These are the sleeping arrangements: Cinnamon sleeps curled up around Fuzzy and Roscoe, Andrew and Maggie sleep together, and me, the intrepid watchdog stays in the backyard and watches for marauding raccoons.