When my Easter gave birth, I'm sure it was her first time. Right off she didn't know what to do about the amnion membrane covering the firstborn. I had to unwrap the scissors (everything that might be needed to assist must be kept right beside Mum's nesting spot, the place you know she's going to birth), incise at the upper chest, then pull it off so the little guy can breathe. She caught on for the second and last. If I wasn't there poor little Dude might not be here. Maybe Snowball and Ladybug if Easter never caught on, I don't know.
Another thing she didn't catch on right away: making her babies pee. Some of you may not know this, but newborns cannot urinate without Mum's help. By 'help' I mean actually licking Baby's privates to stimulate urination. That's right, we're talking about a nasty method of recycling! So I had to demonstrate for her how to- not literally you perv!- I took a small piece of tissue, showed it to her, got her to sniff it. Nothing there, right? Then immediately I rubbed it on one of the babies' privates, squirt! then had her sniff it again. Got it? Not yet. I had to keep doing that for a bit until she finally caught on.
It makes you glad human infants don't require that service! Can you imagine the wife-husband arguments? Parents already fight over whose turn it is to change their diaper (some of them do, anyways). "Jeffrey's gotta pee again Bob..." "Why can't you do it?!" "I'm sick to my stomache!" "Ya shoulda asked me before I brushed my teeth..."
Jeez, why are they designed like that? I'm reasonably certain all living things were designed from the bottom-up by evolution, in this case through natural selection. Somewhere in their history the babies of ancestor feliforms that needed Mum to lick and swallow -ugh mental image go away!- had a better chance of growing up without nasty infections resulting from peeing all over themselves, then passing on those behavioral traits through their offspring. Now, if all that was designed top-down by a creator-deity, I'd have to ask why that celestial being couldn't have thought of a better way. I mean, isn't there a risk to the mother of getting sick, dying, with no genetic heritage to pass on? Maybe, maybe not. I'm not aware of any research done in this area. How would those experiments be conducted anyways? One group of female cats compelled to drink kitty urine, the other not, see if there's any difference? That's one research proposal I'd never finance!
Anyways, what started this was the thought I had of an alternative to this strategy. In the way my thoughts come out of nowhere when I first wake up I imagined Mum picking up her kittens by the scruff of their necks like they always do, turn and hold Baby just outside the nest area, and signal the peeing reflex by grunting. Baby feels that mommy-grip, hears Mum's voice, pees, gets put back. One by one Mum does this all day and night withought having to get up, just hold her kittens over there, say Hhrrrr!! and put them back.
But then whenever you use the mommy-grip to keep your cat still to clip their claws or whatever, make damn sure no one says a word. Everyone keep quiet or the peeing reflex'll be triggered, right in your lap. The thing that got me laughing was a cruel prank one could pull. Someone's holding their cat, cuddling, all sweet when some asshole graps the back of the cat's neck, says Hhrrrr!! and now you have a vengeful human with cat pee on them.
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