Anger Management

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you may have noticed that I had taken some time away from writing. Last week and yesterday, I took a break from both here at The Brown Knowser and from my fiction. I couldn't concentrate, mostly because I found that my head and heart were full of rage.

I was angry at the seemingly growing number of COVidiots, the anti-maskers and the throngs of assholes who are disregarding physical distancing. I've grown irritated with the waffling of the provincial government, which lacks any consistency in rules for the pandemic. Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, is more interested in saving businesses than in saving lives: livelihoods are at risk? how about lives??

I went to a take-out restaurant to find a customer, standing in the small waiting space, without a mask. The staff, behind plexiglass, also maskless, said nothing, despite big notices on the door that state no entry without a mask. I called the feckless customer a "maskless dick" and I've vowed to not order from the restaurant until the pandemic is over, if at all.

I've torn strips off supermarket shoppers who go the wrong way down a clearly marked aisle, who don't turn around when I've pointed out their error and continue to approach me.

I hate these people.

Indeed, DW is increasingly worried about me as my hatred heads toward a hatred of all strangers. She's reluctant to let me out in public—though I resist being outside more and more.

But there seems to be a new diffuser of my rage against society at large: kittens.

Earlier this summer, a good friend of ours bought a farm in Eastern Ontario. He has an old farmhouse, massive barn, granary, ice house, and sugar shack, among other structures. His large property borders along the South Nation River and is an ideal pastoral area, where we can meet and easily maintain ample distances from one another.

Our friend's farm also has an abundance of cats, and over the summer we learned that many of the cats are female, and many of them were pregnant. Since he moved in, he's seen seven litters. He's managed to trap the mama cats, after the kittens have been weaned, and had them fixed. He's given the kittens to animal rescues, and the cat population has come under control.

His favourite cat, aptly named Mama, had babies just over eight weeks ago. Our friend prepared a safe area for her, in the granary, and when the kittens came along—two girls and two boys—Mama was great at protecting and providing for them. Mama was so good-natured that she would purr and let you stroke her, even when she was feeding her wee ones.

DW and DD17 saw one kitten that they immediately fell in love with. We decided that as soon as we could determine the kitten's gender, and if it was a male, we would adopt him. (We have two female cats and had heard that it's best to introduce a male if we were to have a third.)

His name is Finn.

We helped our friend secure homes for the other kittens. We had two other takers for the remaining three kittens, and when we discovered that one kitten, a female calico, was still looking for a home, DW and DD17 decided that they wanted Finn to stick with his energetic sister.

Both kittens are isolated in DW's and my master bathroom. We've set up two beds, a litter box, food and water bowls, and toys. We've taken a few logs from our friends woodpile because they were among the ones where Mama and her babies played, when they grew big enough. And DW has moved our cats' tree into this space to allow the kittens a way of getting some height (I'm not sure our cats are happy about that).

Within hours of moving Finn and his sister into our home, DW noticed a marked calm come over me. Apparently, my voice has softened and I'm smiling again. I've always been a sucker for cats, and though I was reluctant to adopt Finn and resistant to taking his sister, my heart has melted now that we have them.

Cats, it seems, are my best way to manage my anger.

DW still feels I need to stay away from strangers, for the time being. She's probably right.