It was late at night before Emma could get in to use the computer. Val and her mother stayed up late talking, and then both wandered around doing various things for nearly another hour.
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Subject: The end of the line for the turkeys
Thanks for all your help with the turkey breeding question, but we have a bigger problem now. Bart’s planning on slaughtering all the turkeys and giving them to the church for a big Thanksgiving dinner. Last year Lemuel hid under our deck to avoid a similar fate, but that won’t work this year. I don’t think there is anything to be done about this, but Kid is beside herself. If you have ANY ideas on what could be done to save the turkeys, please let me know. Val’s mother is visiting, so I’ll have a hard time getting on the computer at any time except the middle of the night, so I may not get back to you very quickly. If nothing else send some encouraging words that I can read to Kid. She is so upset about Lemuel. She really doesn’t care a fig for the hens, but he’s her friend. And what does it mean to not care a fig anyways?
Emma
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Clementine, who also wasn’t able to get on the computer unless either the yarn lady was out or very soundly asleep, received Emma’s email almost as soon as it was sent. She’d been surfing the web trying to figure out what to put on her Christmas wish list. She’d already decided that once she had made her list that she’d send the yarn lady an email with photos of the toys she’d selected and say it was from someone else, like Peep’s Mommy. So far she’d come up with a really cool cat tower and a bookcase with the shelves as steps and a cat bed on the top. Now she was looking for things called ‘stocking stuffers’.
She frowned as she read the email. As a very young housecat, Clem didn’t have many life experiences that lent themselves to the saving of a flock of turkeys. She did have one idea, so she composed an email to Emma.
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FROM: clem@catlover.com
SUBJECT: Re: The end of the line for the turkeys
Oh, my. My last email must have sounded so insensitive. I hope you didn’t read it to Kid. I wouldn’t want to make anycat sad. There’s a flock of geese that live on the lake out in front of my house. If the turkeys flew over here they could live on the lake with the geese. No one really feeds the geese, but they seem to find enough to eat, so I guess the turkeys could too. Please tell Kid that I feel very, very sad for her, and if she were here I’d snuggle up to her and give her an extra special bath.
Clementine
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Runa was another late night computer user. In her house late could be very late, because Woofie, her human, sometimes stayed up really late, listening to his music or just fiddling around with his computer programs. And on top of that, she had to get up those very steep wood stairs that echoed the sound of every claw click. Still, she made the effort to get on the internet every night, just to check up on her puppies, grandpuppies and great-grandpuppies. They didn’t send her email, but she knew the sites that listed breeding and award information. She loved to read about one of them winning a ribbon or trophy, or to hear about a new litter.
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FROM: runa@coldhaus.com
SUBJECT: Re: The end of the line for the turkeys
Hi, Runa here. I’d suggest that the turkeys move up here, as we have lots of land, but when I looked on Google Earth, you folks are very far away from us. Even if all the turkeys could fly (and some breeds can’t even do that when they’re full grown) there would be no way they could fly all the way up to New Hampshire.
But if Lemuel is the only one that Kid is worried about, why doesn’t he just hide under the deck again? Let the hens become dinner for the church, and then Lemuel could go back home after Thanksgiving. Just an idea.
Runa
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The beloved Daddy had left his iPad downstairs tonight, so Tatum logged on to his email from that. He liked the computer better, but Daddy had turned it off before going to bed, which in itself was unusual. When he read the email he woke Ursula who was sleeping under the corner of the couch. She wasn’t an easy cat to wake up, kind of like the noisy girl, so he waited until she was able to say more than, “Mrfff.” Even when she was fully conscious, Ursula didn’t have anything positive to say. “Tatum, bottom line – turkeys equal turkey dinners. Sooner or later they would be dinner, well, it’s sooner. I feel bad for Kid, but there’s nothing we can do. Now let me get back to sleep.” She crawled back under the couch and was asleep within seconds.
Tatum sighed. He couldn’t write that to Emma – she knew that already. It certainly wouldn’t be encouraging to Kid. He considered what he could write as he lay on the couch, the iPad in front of him. Before he could come up with a compassionate response he’d drifted off to sleep himself.
Rudy read the email with dismay. Poor Kid. She remembered how sad they’d all been the first time the Mommy had gone away for the summer to Virginia, and figured this must be a hundred times worse. Peep had cried for days, and been weirder than a snake in pajamas for weeks. She was sorry she didn’t know about this earlier, as the Cat Club had met as usual on Friday night, and they all could have discussed it then. Rudy could call a special meeting, and would, but it would have leavened up a tense meeting, what with the election and all. She decided to wait until she had something concrete to offer before responding.
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