Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Hi, everyone. This is Dawn Klemm, and you are on my podcast, Milkweed and Monarchs.
[00:00:09] This time of year, we're getting into the holiday season, and I thought I would share a funny pet story with you, and I hope you enjoy it. I laugh every time still that I think about it. So. So here we go.
[00:00:28] It was the fall of 2014.
[00:00:33] My youngest daughter had just gone off to college, and I was now going to be an empty nester. And I have to admit, I was struggling. I really missed my daughters. I don't know. They had been such a big part of my life, almost like my best friends, in a way. I sure I'm not the only mother that felt like this. I've heard all the stories about empty nesters, but I don't know if it's because they were adopted and they were older. I just didn't feel like I had enough time with them.
[00:01:11] And so I was kind of sad about the whole thing.
[00:01:16] And I was thinking, oh, what am I going to do now? You know, I was a director at that time working at Mercy Hospital, and on Fridays, we had our leadership meeting every Friday morning.
[00:01:32] So I had gotten to work a little earlier, and I was on my way to the cafeteria to get a large cup of coffee to make it through the leadership meeting.
[00:01:44] And as I was going through the seating section, there was another director there, and she had her laptop out, and she was looking at pictures of something on the laptop. And offhandedly, I said good morning to her. And she says, hey, come here, come here. I want to show you something.
[00:02:03] So I'm like, okay. So I go over, and on her computer, she showed me pictures of six adorable kittens.
[00:02:17] They were so cute. Two of them were calico, two of them were black, one of them was gray, and one of them was yellow.
[00:02:27] And she said, my mom lives in Florida with my stepdad, and, excuse me, he works on the grounds of Florida State University in Gainesville.
[00:02:44] He was going into a building that literally has only one way to enter into that building, and there are no windows there. And she said it kept things like fertilizer and stuff for ground keeping, but they didn't want people in and out of there, basically because of the fertilizer.
[00:03:09] So he went into the building early one morning, and he heard a noise, and he goes way to the back of the building, and there he found these six kittens.
[00:03:23] Well, the one thing I should tell you is my friend who was the director loved cats. She already had four cats. She absolutely loved cats.
[00:03:35] And her mom was Sending her a picture of the kittens because she was trying to convince her to take on a couple more cats, right? Which for my friend, was going to be no trouble at all. Zero trouble. She was in it hook, line and sinker once she saw those cute little faces.
[00:03:58] But she said to me, well, what do you think about getting a couple of kittens? I said, really? How are we gonna get them? They're in Florida. She says, oh, my mom's gonna drive the kittens back. I said, really? Your mom's gonna drive back from Florida to Michigan to bring kittens? She said, yeah, because she knows they'll be going to a good home.
[00:04:23] I said, oh, I don't know. I don't know if I should really get a couple kittens or not. Of course, I'm not getting just one. I gotta have two. Two would be good, I said. She said, I think you should get the black kittens. I go, why? She says, you know, people are so cruel to black kittens. They kill them. I go, what do you mean they kill them? She says, yes, especially like around Halloween. They're so superstitious. Honestly, you know, I don't even know how I had made it to 55 years old at that point, and I had no understanding that people would actually kill kittens because they were black and superstitious. I'm like, that is the weirdest thing I've ever heard in my life. I do not get that at all.
[00:05:12] But I said, well, you know what? Yes, I'm gonna take the black kittens. It was a male kitten and a female kitten. Brother and sister.
[00:05:24] I said, yeah, I'll take them. She says, really? I said, yeah, I'm in it. Why not?
[00:05:30] And the more I thought about it, I was kind of excited about it. I really was, because the girls were gone. I needed something. We did have a dog. We had a great dog, A black lab Dante. Wonderful, wonderful lab of the best dogs we've ever had. And we've always had a dog, but we've never had cats. My husband is opposed or was opposed to having cats, but when I was growing up, we always had a cat. We had a Siamese cat the whole time I was growing up until I got into middle school. Then we didn't have a cat anymore. He. He lived out his life. I think he was like 15 when he died. And. And then I tried to have one of my friends put a kitten on the porch and ring the doorbell. And I'm like, look, mom, somebody dropped off a kitten. I think we can adopt It. And my mom's like, oh, no, you're not going to pull that on me. My mom knew me very well, so we never got another cat after our Siamese cat, Muhad, died. But I like cats. My grandma always had cats on the farm.
[00:06:44] She had outdoor cats. And those cats always had their kittens underneath the barn. And then she would always put a big pan of food and milk out for them, and they would always come up to the house to eat when they got a little older and the mom wasn't nursing them anymore. She had one cat that she absolutely loved, and she let him come into the house. His name was Harvey. He was the coolest cat. He was so cool. He was a big gray cat, and he was big. And he would lay on the table by the window of the porch. Sometimes he would lay in a bowl. She had a bowl on that table that she would put fruit in. But if there was nothing in the bowl, Harvey would get in the bowl. And it was so funny. It was just so funny. It wasn't the table that we ate at. It was just an extra secondary table in case she had company and she needed to bring another table over with stuff on it.
[00:07:53] So I always loved Harvey. That was one of the coolest cats.
[00:07:58] And the more I thought about these two little black kittens, the more I really wanted them. And I was excited about it because I was rescuing them from the hands of someone that would terrorize two black cats and even kill them. I don't like that kind of stuff.
[00:08:18] So I never told anybody. I never told Craig about the kittens at all. I never told my daughters about the kittens at all. I said, let's just wait and see what happens. Is her mom really gonna drive these kittens home?
[00:08:35] So a couple weeks later, my friend informed me that her mom was getting ready to drive the kittens back. I'm like, really? She says, yeah. I go, she's gonna drive those kittens from Florida. Yes, Dawn. She's bringing the kittens. You're gonna get the two black ones, and I'm gonna get a calico cat and then orange one. I think orange, or maybe it was gray. I said, okay, whatever. I'm on board.
[00:09:10] So the day did come, and they brought the kittens over to me in the afternoon. And I had been trying to figure out, where am I gonna put them? You know what I mean? Where am I gonna put them? Because, really, I'm gonna have to tell Craig about them pretty quick. I'm not gonna be able to keep this secret. For too long. So I decided on putting them in our laundry room. It wasn't a very big laundry room, but it was big enough. And the I put a little box in there with a blanket and everything and I got two little bowls and everything. I was ready. And I bought food too. So I was ready for the kittens. When they showed up, the her mom was so excited that I took the kittens. She was ecstatically happy. She thought the little laundry room was perfect for them. She liked the little setup. She thought, oh good, these cats are gonna go to a great home.
[00:10:10] So I was excited. I was really, really excited.
[00:10:14] So get the kittens. And I just kept him in the laundry room that afternoon. And my husband comes home from work and I go, oh, come here, I gotta show you something.
[00:10:29] That's a nice way to introduce it, right?
[00:10:32] So he comes over to the laundry room and I open the door and these two little tiny black kittens pop their head out of this little box that I have created for him with the bed in it.
[00:10:45] He goes, what's that? I said, there are two kittens. Two kittens. He said, what are you doing? I said, yeah, I adopted them.
[00:10:55] He says, what in the heck are you talking about?
[00:10:59] I said, I don't know. They found him in Florida. I told him the whole story. I told him how her mother had driven all the way from Gainesville up to, up to Spring Lake to bring these kittens here. He's like, oh my God, I have never heard anything so crazy before in my life. You couldn't get two kittens here? I go, no, I probably wouldn't have. I'm rescuing these kittens. He's like, oh yeah, I forgot, you rescue everything. Well, why not? I mean, life is short. We should be good to animals, people and plants. Those are my three things.
[00:11:36] So. So I go, yeah, we're gonna keep them. He says, the girls have barely been off away at college and you had to rescue something else. I go, well, maybe that's true, but I, I want to keep these kittens. So he's like, okay, whatever.
[00:11:56] The girls came home from college, they were both going to the same university that weekend. And I showed them the kittens and the girls were like, why you get kittens, mom? They didn't want the kittens cuz I wanted to. I said, I'm rescuing them.
[00:12:13] So they quickly decided to name the cats. The youngest one was. She's has some allergies, but she was in love with those kittens. Right out of the gate. She's Very similar to me that way. And so she named the little girl cat Sadie, and she named the boy cat Sammy. So Sammy and Sadie are still living with me happily. It's been 10 years now.
[00:12:40] And the girls took the kittens outdoors that day and let them run around in the yard. And so Craig was like, okay, maybe this isn't going to be too bad, because they can be indoor outdoor cats, which they still are to this day. And he says, I, I, I think I might be able to make do with this. It's not something that I would have been saying yes to if you would have asked me, but since you already got them here, I think I can go along with it. I'm like, all right, things are looking up.
[00:13:19] So, you know, the first two years, we're growing the little kittens and getting them to where they used they needed to be. And, and it was the winter of 2015, so they were just barely a year old at that point. And in 2016, we moved to the house that we're in now. So we moved. But in 2015, they were a little over a year old. We figured they were born on the 4th of July, so they were about a year and a half then.
[00:13:58] And my mom always came up during the school year to stay with me. Well, this year she didn't come until the holidays because the girls were away at college. So she got there right around probably a week before Thanksgiving. And I would work, but I would still come home, and we'd all have dinner together, her and my husband and I.
[00:14:23] And she said, the strangest thing happened today, and she brought her dog with her. I said, what? She said, I came into the kitchen after being outdoors, and we had a fairly large kitchen at that time, and I had an old antique braided rug in the middle of the floor. She said, I came into the kitchen and that rug was all bunched up into, like, a big. It looked like a mountain. She said the, the rug was as high as my knees. I go, what? She said, yeah. I said, who's doing this? She says, I have no idea.
[00:15:07] Have you seen that happen before? I said, never happened. One time. I don't even know what you're talking about. Right. I thought she was maybe losing it at that time. She wouldn't appreciate me saying that, by the way, but I didn't know. It just seemed so strange to me.
[00:15:24] So a week goes by. Same thing happens again. We got this rug all bunched up in the center, and this time I saw it. She didn't move the rug because she wanted to show me what it looked like. Whoever was doing it had pushed the ends of the rug into the middle and it pushed the middle up into the air. I'm like, that's the darndest. I go, do you think the dog is doing that? Cuz we had a. Dante was a big lab. I mean he was a large dog. So I was like, maybe he's doing it. We said, why would the dog. I don't know why he would do it. Who else could be doing it? We just couldn't figure it out.
[00:16:08] This happened like two or three times. All of us were like, this is a mystery, okay?
[00:16:14] No way were we thinking that a 15 month old kitten, barely a cat, would do something like that.
[00:16:25] So Christmas comes up. We've got the Christmas tree and I have a wool tree skirt that I had put around the Christmas tree and it tied in the back. It didn't have Velcro or anything, it just had ties.
[00:16:42] And then we started to notice something strange going on with the tree skirt. First it was moved away from the tree. We're like, how did that happen? I mean it was tied.
[00:16:58] Who is untying the Christmas tree skirt and moving it? All of us are like, what in the heck is going on? This is strange.
[00:17:09] This is so strange.
[00:17:11] So I was in the laundry room doing the laundry and I turn around and there on the floor is the Christmas tree skirt. I am not lying. So they had to drag the Christmas tree skirt from the living room, through the kitchen, in the hallway into the living room.
[00:17:34] Does Dante wouldn't do that? First of all, he's so big. We would see what he's doing.
[00:17:40] I really don't know what the heck is going on. But I was starting to get a little spooked. Do we have a ghost in this house? You know, could not figure it out.
[00:17:52] Then we were all sitting in the living room watching tv and we look to the left of us and. And guess what? There's the Christmas tree skirt. What?
[00:18:04] No lie. The Christmas tree skirt made it through the living room through the kitchen or. Yes. And then into the family room. So it went through three rooms and there's the Christmas tree skirt lying there. By now my daughters are home for Christmas vacation. They're like, what in the heck is going on? I don't know. I really, really have no idea what is happening here. Craig didn't know. We were all trying to blame it. My mom had a dog, but the dog was small, like a pug. We're like, there's no Way the pug is getting behind that tree, untying it, and bringing it in here. It's not happening. It can't be Dante.
[00:18:51] The rug in the kitchen was bunched up again. So the rug in the kitchen was a wool braided rug, and it was a boiled wool tree skirt. Okay, so they were both wool. I'm like, what is somebody does not like wool? What else could it possibly, possibly be? I really couldn't figure it out. So this was going on probably about a month.
[00:19:20] A month, easily. It was either the kitchen rug was bunched up or the tree skirt had been evacuated from around the tree, and we were finding it in the damnedest places. I just couldn't figure it out. I'm telling you, when I was in the laundry room and I turned around and that tree skirt was there, I actually was spooked. I'm like, what is going on?
[00:19:47] Is there a ghost? I mean, I'm serious. It was so weird.
[00:19:52] So anyway, it's Friday night, and all of us are in the family room getting ready to watch a movie.
[00:20:02] And, you know, we're all pretty comfortable. We're on the couch. We're spread out. Craig's in his chair. We've got the movie and ready to go.
[00:20:11] And in walks Sammy with the tree skirt in his mouth. I kid you not.
[00:20:21] I kid you not. My mom starts pointing at the cat, and every single one of us just burst out laughing because we finally caught him in action. We finally figured out who it was, but we had to catch him in action. So the male cat was actually untying the. The tree skirt and then hauling that tree skirt around and just dropping it off. And I have no idea to this day why he was doing that. The only thing I could ever figure out, and what would be the same between the tree skirt and that rug is that they were both made of wool. And I don't know if there was something about wool that just got him irritated like that, because that. I mean, that's what happened.
[00:21:20] And I said to everybody when I was telling them the story, and what's the funniest part of the story?
[00:21:27] I kept putting the tree skirt back on the tree. Like, why am I going to put it back on the tree knowing that Sammy's going to take that tree skirt off?
[00:21:39] My husband said, all right, this is the craziest thing I've ever seen. Let's just use the tree skirt for this year, and then we're gonna get rid of it. I said, okay, I think that's a good idea. There's plenty of tree skirts out there, polyester that we can get and put around the tree skirt that look great and I don't think we have anything to worry about.
[00:22:04] And as far as the rug went, we kept the rug in the kitchen and he still continued to push it up in the center like that until we moved and when we moved, we don't have a rug in the kitchen now, so he. There's nothing for him to move around. But I think it's just so interesting because he wasn't even that old. He was. He was about a year and a half at the most. And he's moving that. That big tree. That tree skirt was heavy and so was the rug.
[00:22:41] Huh? But anyhow, no more wool around these cats. And we still have them here. They just turned 10 in July this year and they go in and out of the house all the time. And I am so happy that I adopted them and I hope I can keep them for 10 more years because they have been a source of entertainment and joy. And I'm pretty sure if my grandma was alive, she would have loved the story.
[00:23:21] Thank you for listening to my story today. I hope you got a kick out of it.
[00:23:26] Absolutely. 100 the truth if you're in, have a good story like that that you'd like to share, just let me know. You can go on my website, milk.comm I l K-M-O-N.com all one word. Or you can leave your phone number and I'll call you. Or you can call me directly. 616-843-1392 and we can converse about the story and the information you want to share. The more stories we get on here, the better the website's going to be. I appreciate all of you for taking the time to listen until the next time.
