Mama Mia
an excerpt

Standing in the driveway I peered through the open window of my ’82 Civic and realized my car would never be the same. Scratch that. The matted velour seats which I’d spent five years breaking in would never be the same.
They were now home to a litter of kittens. Two-minute-old kittens, apparently, in all their glory, amniotic sac, placenta, and all. Ick and double ick. The joys of cat ownership became all too clear in the squirming mass before me and I felt inclined to agree with the dog/cat theory: dogs have owners, cats have staff. With my move back to Africa in three months, I not only had to find a home for my cat, I now had to find loving homes for five feisty felines. Perfect.
Still gripping my briefcase, I balanced a doughnut on the top of my coffee mug and schlepped back to my front door. My cat, Harriet, mother to the mass, darted in front of me, causing the perilously perched pastry to slide down my skirt and onto the driveway. Lunging to catch it, I misjudged the grip on my mug and felt the warmth of vanilla enhanced Sumatra as it trickled down the other leg.
Danny would just have to wait.

“Traitor.” I mumbled in the general direction of my six-year-old tabby. I watched Harriet hop through the open window of my car and onto the seat to inspect her new offspring, likely searching for evidence of human tampering.
“Don’t worry, Your Highness. I didn’t touch any of them. Trust me.”
I reached the porch, fumbled with the screen door, and wedged a knee into the opening before plunging into my 50’s ranch style rambler. Kicking off my shoes, I relished the feel of smooth wood floors made so through decades of literal foot traffic.
Besides the dozens of towering cedars dotting the yard, the floors sealed my decision five years ago to rent the place. My feet had spent a lifetime—almost twenty five years--sliding across similar floors at home, although I doubt those were built from northwest cedar trees. These days, after a full day of work I loved returning to my house and abandoning the confinement of shoes to reminisce about the orphanage a continent and @three time zones away.
But the similarities between Uganda and Washington ended at the floorboards. Not necessarily a bad thing, it was what it was. After dumping my plate and mug into the sink, I continued my tirade, not caring that the object of my wrath was fifty feet away and couldn’t hear me anyway. Or understand me. Whatever.
“You know, this is getting to be a bad habit, Harriet.” I hollered. “You’re going to get a reputation one of these days. What is this, your third litter in two years? When the neighbor cats start talking, watch out, baby. You’ll be labeled for life. Oh, and here’s a thought: why don’t you stick around and clean up your own mess once in awhile?”
Crouched on the floor of my living room, I dug through a moving box and searched for an old shirt or article of clothing I wouldn’t mind sacrificing on the altar of feline motherhood. I settled on a stained Betty Boop towel, a remnant of my care-free, cat-free days as a teenager in Uganda, content with missionary barrel rejects. Visions of the muck on the well-worn gray interior of my Civic caused a momentary wave of nausea to surface and I choked down a dry heave.
“Seriously, Harriet, I’m taking you in. No amount of purring and sweet talk is going to get you off the hook this time. As soon as Dr. Doolittle or whatever his name is gives the okay, it’s snippety snip time. I am so done with the kitten stage.”
“Do you always talk to yourself when you’re supposed to be picking me up for work?” Up to my elbows in holey sweatpants, oily rags, and old swim towels, I flinched and glanced up at my carpool buddy, co-worker, and neighbor, Danny Whitney.
His black, curly hair was still wet from his morning shower; the aroma of hair gel and after shave floated across the room and tickled my nose. Rather than asking the obvious question such as “Don’t you ever knock?” I flung at him, “Quick, what’s the best way to clean up after a cat gives birth?”
Danny blinked a couple times. This is something he does regularly in my presence. He says I tend to sideswipe him with the bizarre and atypical. He also says I’m quirky. What I do know is that I’m ADD. Certifiable and recently diagnosed. So it’s no surprise that in the midst of a post-kitten traumatic stress situation, I was able to freeze time and make a mental note of Danny’s wardrobe.
Blue jeans, black blazer, mocha-colored dress shirt, contrasting nicely with quizzical blue eyes. How in the world did I become friends with a guy who could easily be a Gap model? Physically, Danny was crème broule. I was more like . . .frosted animal crackers.
“Wow, I never saw that one coming. Do you actually work at this? Do you sit down and write ways to completely throw me off?” His eyes traveled from the overflowing box to my skirt. Covering his mouth, he furrowed his eyebrows and took a step backwards, toward the open sliding glass door.
I rolled my eyes. “Oh good grief, this is coffee and frosting. The cat had babies in my car. Like ten minutes ago. I was walking back to the front door and she jumped in front of me. Sorry I’m late, but I’m hardly going to plant my behind in postpartum cat soup until it’s been sterilized. Twice.”
“Ditto.”
“Thanks for the support.”
Stepping into the living room, Danny grinned and set down his sack lunch and briefcase. “Always. Didn’t your cat just give birth a few months ago?”
“Nine. And yes, I’m taking her to the vet. Soon.”
“Why haven’t you taken her in yet?”
“Because I’m leaving, remember? Harriet’s issues will no longer be my issues. I guess I was hoping to hold off another round of babies until well after I’m gone.”
“Then I suppose I’ll have to take care of her. Along with your hamster and job responsibilities.” He shrugged off his coat and tossed in the counter. “I don’t get it. So you grew up in Africa. So what? Why do you have to leave? Most people would love to be in your situation.” I opened my mouth but he waved aside my reasons before I could rattle them off.
“Great job. Great house. Great neighbor. Voila––great life.” He counted off on his fingers.
“You forgot to mention great car.”
He glanced out the front window and smirked. “No I didn’t.”
“Regardless. Just so you’re updated, the hamster died six months ago. Can we postpone this discussion for a later date? Like in a year? I’ll call you from Uganda and then we can argue about whether I should head back to the mission field okay?” I held up a faded Betty Boop. “Should I use this? Do I need to use some kind of antibacterial substance on the front seat or anything?”
Danny held up his hands. “Fine, truce. We’ll deal with the here and now first. How did you clean up the mess last time she had kittens?”
“Harriet had the decency to give birth in an abandoned dog house in the empty lot across the street. There was no clean up involved. This is a first for me too.”
Danny took a deep breath and said, “There’s only one thing we can do.” He raised his eyebrows expectantly.
Okay, I’ll give him this – they guy has expressive eyebrows.
Impatient, I glared at him.
“Google. We need to Google cat birth stuff.”
He was right. Although an avid cat lover, I had no business dealing with the medical side of things. So my cohort of five years and I wedged into my closet-sized office and I typed “cat birth” into my computer. Within a second (.07 Google informed me), 6,840,000 results appeared.
“Too much info, big time. Why don’t you narrow your results a bit? Try ‘kitten afterbirth.’”
I looked at Danny in surprise. “I don’t even want to know how you know about this stuff.”
“Unlike you, I have sisters, remember? All six of whom have had babies, lots of them. In quick succession. I don’t think even Harriet could keep up with the Whitney girls.”
I decided to forego informing my much-blessed friend with a lecture on the differences between women and cats and shrugged my shoulders. I was clearly out of my league.
“Okay, ‘kitten afterbirth’ it is. You know I kind of feel like Alex Trebek from Jeopardy. The category is: Topics never to bring up in a business lunch. What is: Cat Afterbirth.” I so amused myself.
Danny was not amused. “Mia, please stay focused. We’re late as it is and you’ll probably want to change that skirt before we go.” Not only was Danny my co-worker, he was my manager, a fact he found continual delight in.
“Fine, fine.” I typed in a number of variations for “kitten afterbirth and click-clicked my way toward the goal of clean car resolution. I scrolled through a variety of pages and together, Danny and I learned more about the nuances of cat birthing than I thought possible.
I stopped clicking. “Wait, here’s something. A cat about to give birth is called a ‘Queen’––now that’s appropriate.” I read further. “Bingo! ‘Following the birth of her kittens, the Queen Cat will most likely eat the placenta, umbilical cord, and all remaining birth matter.’”
I felt my face lose all color. We looked at each other and gagged.
“Oh my gosh, Ewe. I may never eat again.” I ran out to my car for a look-see. Sure enough, Harriet hunched over her kittens, tongue exposed with a look in my direction that said, “Well, what do you know? I do stick around to clean up my own messes.”