Cats Five

The evening would later be remembered as the one before the big storm but as we sat behind the barn, we just knew that it was hot – and very humid.  We had spent most of the week occupied with hay; cutting, turning, baling.  All the time watching the sky and hoping for the right weather.  For hay that is.  The sun had shone and except for one short shower, the conditions had been perfect.

But we could tell that the weather was going to change and we wanted to get the hay into the barn before it did.

We had a great crop with an unexpected extra 200 bales.  In the heat, this blessing was hard to appreciate.  The air was thick and stifling in the hayloft and we could only work for short periods of time.  So, after a while, we sat behind the barn drinking water, waiting for the heat to diminish.

Suddenly from the window above came a call, “Sharon, Sharon! Cats!”  I looked up and there was Veetya holding up four fingers.  Veetya was staying with us for six weeks.  He had been a toddler living in Chernobyl, Ukraine when the nuclear reactor exploded in 1986.  He and his family had been contaminated with radiation and relocated to a village some distance away.  However, the new village was also contaminated, although to a lesser degree.  Many of the children in the area were, nine years later, getting sick – cancer, hair loss and depressed immune systems.

We were part of a group to get these Children of Chernobyl away from the radiation to improve their health, to boost their immune systems, and Veetya had come to live with us for the summer.  He was just learning English and could say only a few words.  One of them was “cat.”

We had three barn cats and five new kittens.  The kittens’ nest had been exactly where the bales were dropping off the hay elevator onto the hay loft floor.  The younger children were to look after the kittens who still attempted to return to their nest.  And now one of the kittens was missing!  This is what Veetya was telling me.

It will show up, I reasoned and put the matter out of my mind as we climbed up to the loft again and began to catch and haul bales higher and higher.  They seemed to get heavier by the minute.

We finally finished.  The relief of knowing that 600 bales awaited the winter safe and warm in the barn still overshadowed the kitten’s plight.  During the night a huge wind storm with sheet lightning struck.

The storm had awakened Veetya and he ran to the barn as soon as he got up in the morning.  I was eating breakfast when he came into the kitchen from the barnyard and proclaimed with a huge smile on his face, “Sharon.  Cats five!”  His eyes showed relief and joy.

I felt joy also, at first because this was Veetya’s first English “sentence”.  I felt very proud. 

Then I began to understand what he was telling me.  The missing kitten was back with its mother and brothers and sister.  The lost one had returned.  The family was reunited and all was well.

                                Veetya at right with his family

Veetya was the youngest of a family of five children.  Four boys and one girl, just like the kittens.  They had lost their home and been relocated, just like the kittens.  Veetya’s mother was currently in a sanatorium and his father was disabled from the nuclear accident.  This boy knew what it was to be taken from his home and to feel disoriented.  He understood what it felt like to be the one kitten far from home, far from his family.   He knew how important it was to be reunited!

But the parallels went even further.  My family had four children, three boys and a girl. With Veetya, we now had four boys and one girl.  We had hung the picture of him with our family so that he knew that he was part of our family.  He was now the fifth child of two families, half a world away.  He was the “cat five.”

Eventually Veetya went back to Ukraine to be reunited with his family.  The fifth kitten was going back to where he belonged.  But in travelling away and coming back home, he built a bridge of friendship between Canada and Ukraine, between two families, between himself and all of us.

Our family missed him and it felt like “cats four” for quite a while.  We never wrote because his family had little money to spend on postage and we didn’t want to burden them.   I can only imagine how hard it was for his parents to trust complete strangers to take care of their ten-year-old son but they knew that it would give a better chance of life.  And I hope it. did.  When I hear news of Ukraine, I wonder if he is part of it.  When my kids were born, we still thought of Russia including Ukraine, as the enemy.  Ten years later a Ukrainian boy taught us beautifully about belonging to the global family.