The Huntress

By Ann E. Vitale

Never interrupt someone doing something you said couldn't be done.

~Amelia Earhart

The local shelter called and asked if I would try to bottle-raise two kittens whose mother had been killed by a car. The babies were about two or three days old and required round-the-clock warmth and feedings. I took them on, toting box and blankets, hot-water bottles, and special formula to the office with me. I seemed to be a successful mom-cat surrogate except for the cleaning chores, for which I substituted a dunk in a bowl of warm water and a fluff-up with my hair dryer.

I found a safe, indoor home for the male kitten when he was old enough to be on his own. Miss Manners stayed with me. Actually, she was glued to me. I didn't know kittens could imprint on substitute mothers.

I wanted her to be a housecat, but she fussed so much when I went outside, meowing on a windowsill, trying to sneak out with me, that I relented. We live on a little-traveled road and behind the house we have a pond and acres of fields, woods, and brush. She didn't go far, and I had no trouble calling her back when I went inside.

One day a friend and I were taking a dip in the pond. Miss Manners, about six months old then, followed us to the edge of the water and watched us swim. She mewed and mewed and pretty soon had her front paws in the water. We watched, shoulder deep in the clear water, as she waded farther and farther, crying the whole time, until she struck out paddling for me. I caught her and carried the sopping cat to shore, shaking my head at what I'd just witnessed.

A month or so later, she ventured to the wooded wetland a hundred yards away. She came back carrying a weasel — a brown stoat — dead with two neat punctures at the nape of the neck. A naturalist friend looked at it and asked to keep it to mount for his native species collection. He said he had seen very few tracks of small weasels in the area. He added that this must have been an old or injured one for a cat to catch it, because Miss Manners was too young and inexperienced a hunter to outwit and out-reflex a weasel.

Summer wore on and one day I found a dead but intact bullhead fish, about six inches long, on my porch. Frowning, I could only think that a silly or energetic fish had accidentally jumped out of the pond and Miss Manners found it flipping on the lawn and brought it to me.

The next day another bullhead appeared on the steps. What was going on with the fish in the pond? While sitting in a lawn chair reading, I watched Miss Manners wade into the pond until she was more than belly deep in the water. She stood very still until, splash! She speared a small fish with her claws, brought it to shore, picked it up and carried it to the porch.

Her next triumph took place in the deep of winter. Again I was outside with her, brushing snow from the car, when she headed down to the wooded wetland, not at all concerned about the three inches of white, wet stuff she needed to march through. I was delighted to call my naturalist friend and tell him to come over if he wanted to add to his collection of native animals. Miss Manners had caught another weasel, this time in a white, spotted ermine coat.

As though she had proven a point and needed no further demonstration of her prowess, she retired contentedly to the house. With swimming, hunting, and fishing out of her system, she spent the next eighteen years as a cat should be — warm and dry.

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