Love, two, new set

I used a tennis racket this week for the first time probably since high school.  If the truth is to be known, I’ve probably never played a proper game of tennis in my life which was all the more frustrating, I might add, when several years ago I was signed off work with tennis elbow.

I did attend Wimbledon once with a friend while I lived in England.  I saw Tim Henman dash by with the Olympic torch in the rain, but beyond that we weren’t able to watch any tennis because of the rain, and we spent the day strolling around with high hopes and drank Pimms.

Tim Henman with the Olympic torch - June 2004

I’m not athletic at all in fact.  I hated physical education classes with a passion.  I was always the one, particularly when we had to do gymnastics, who would discretely let my classmates get ahead of me in the queue hoping that the class would end before I had to perform the latest maneuver that we’d just been taught.  You name it – the balance beam, floor routines, parallel bars, the dreaded horse, etc. – I stunk at it!  Spraining my ankle in a less than graceful dismount from a horse in grade seven probably did not help to change my opinion that you could kill yourself doing that stuff.

I did learn a valuable lesson in human psychology from my gymnastics classes however.  I had a gym teacher in high school who loved to make an example of those in the class who clearly disliked the particular athletic challenge that they faced.  She’d call them up from where they were hiding behind their classmates wishing they could be invisible and would make them demonstrate whatever somersault or volleyball serve she was teaching at the time.  I quickly learned to flash a fake smile of enthusiasm in this class whenever she glanced my way.  It was a matter of survival and a technique I learned and have called upon a few times over the years!

So getting back to my tennis racket experience this week.  I must confess I’ve gotten somewhat off topic as my use of a tennis racket this week really had nothing to do with tennis.

Last Saturday morning, I spotted the third kitten from the feral litter, two of which we’d caught a week earlier.  It was outside licking drippings from a neighbour’s garbage bag off the pavement.  Yummy, huh?

So, we resolved to try to capture it, and as our garage had been such a drawing card for the first two kittens, we left the door opened about 5 or 6 inches and left an opened can of cat food in to lure it.  It was a very cold night.  The next morning I quickly closed the garage door and managed to catch the mother cat.

With the experience of catching “Cujo” still fresh in my mind, I was less than enthusiastic at the thought of picking “Mom” up.  This is where the tennis racket came into play.  We boxed her in so that she had only one option for escape from the corner of the garage where she was hiding.  Using a hockey stick, my husband was able to gently nudge her out of her hiding spot.  (A hockey stick is his sports apparatus of choice when dealing with wild animals.  Years previously he’d used one on a bat that got into the house, but that’s another story.)  Then, we each used tennis rackets to block any other avenues of escape while she was forced into an animal carrier.  I’m sure we looked very intelligent ganging up on this poor frightened animal with our tennis rackets in hand.

The next night we caught Houdini – the third kitten – so named because in transferring it from one carrier to a larger cage, it escaped necessitating the total re-organization of our garage to catch her. 

Houdini is cute.  She’s mostly black with a white “milk” moustache.  I was able to hold her for a few minutes yesterday so there is hope on the horizon for her that she learn to appreciate human beings just as her siblings are.  Mom, on the other hand, still hates me, probably about as much as I hate gymnastics in which case she has my sympathy.  I’m really hoping with some love and attention she’ll decide she really wants to be a house cat after all and that we’ll then be able to surrender her to the humane society for adoption.  If she stays like this, growling and looking like she wants to rip a pound of flesh off me whenever I am near, the humane society will have little choice but to put her down.

So, does it all make sense now?  With Cujo and the tabby, then there were four – Love, Two, New Set…