Caregiving Daughter

I’m a few days late with this post, but I really wanted to write something positive about Mom for a tribute for Mother’s Day.  Dealing with the dementia that accompanies Mom’s Alzheimer’s is a part of our daily life.  Of course, she wasn’t always this way.  The qualities that I most admired about Mom growing up was her ability to work hard and solve problems in a creative way.  This post is one of my favorite stories about Mom.

When I was growing up as a small child in the 70’s, we lived in a small ranch-style house in central Indiana.  I used to spend a lot of time playing outside.  One spring, we had a cat that had a litter of kittens.  I was on the porch looking for them when I heard a one mewing, but I couldn’t find it.

I looked around for the kitten, and I figured out that the mewing was coming from the top step to the porch.  Our house was built on a hill.  The porch was built out of concrete blocks and it had concrete steps starting near the door to the basement going all the way up to the top of the porch.  The back of the top step had three small holes (for ventilation,  I guess).  The mewing was coming from those holes.

Once I realized the kitten was  in the steps, I ran in the house to tell Mom.  She was sitting down talking on the phone.  I excitedly tried to tell her that one of the kittens was under the porch.  At first she tried to shush me so she could continue her conversation (this was back before cordless phones).  I insisted that she needed to come out, so she hung up to see what was going on.

We went out to the porch.  By now, the mama cat was on the step meowing back to her kitten.  Mom knelt down and looked into the dark holes.  She tried reaching her hand inside, but she couldn’t reach the kitten.  She said we would have to wait until Dad came home.

As soon as Dad pulled in the drive in our green station wagon, I ran up to tell him about the crisis.  He assured me that we would find a way to save the kitten.  I wasn’t worried.  I was still at the age where I believed Mom and Dad could fix anything.

First, Dad tried to move the concrete slab that covered the porch.  He had someone come over to help, and they heaved and pushed for hours to try to move it.  It didn’t work.  They left a huge crack in the concrete, but the slab wouldn’t budge.  The kitten would have to stay under the porch for the night.

The next day the kitten was still mewing for help.  It sounded like he was further down.  When Dad came home, he had another idea to rescue the kitten.  Since the porch seemed tightly enclosed, he thought if he filled it with water, the kitten would float up to the top where we could reach it.  He stuck the water hose in one of the holes and let the water pour in.  This idea didn’t work either.   All the water ended up leaking in the basement.  The kitten had to spend another night alone in the cold (now wet), dark porch.

By the third day, the kitten’s mews were growing weak.  I was still confident that everything would be okay.  I knew Mom and Dad would figure out something, and the kitten would be saved.   Looking back, Mom and Dad were not acting confident.  They had stopped reassuring me that they would save the kitten, and they were talking quietly to each other when I was around.

It finally occurred to me that the kitten had not been able to eat for three whole days.  I asked Mom how the kitten would be able to get food since it was stuck down there.  Mom thought for a minute, then she announced that we would get some food to the kitten.   She reached up in the cabinet and pulled down a tall plastic cup.  She poked a hole in it with sharp scissors and tied a string to it.  She poured a little milk in the cup and went out to the porch.

Mom knelt down on the step and slowly lowered the cup down the hole.   She waited for a minute, then slowly pulled the cup back up.  She smiled over at me and said, “I think I caught a fish!”  When she pulled the cup out of the hole, the kitten was inside the cup!  After three long days alone under the porch, the little kitten was safe.  The mama cat cleaned him up, and we gave him food and lots of love.

I know that Mom must have felt so good knowing that she saved the kitten.  She was able to do something that my dad had not been able to.  Not only did she save the kitten, she lived up to my expectation that she could make everything be okay.

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