I have been doing animal welfare work since I was a teenager, well over 30 years now.  Each of the animals at our family animal shelter has their own story of how they came to live with us, most of the stories being quite heartbreaking, because most of the cats arrived malnourished, and often traumatized from neglect or abuse.

The most dramatic of the cats’ stories has to be Creeker cats arrival.  One night, after returning from town, I heard something chirping, or mewing, in the direction of the creek that fronts our property.  It’s pitch dark at the creek at night, with vast amounts of land, so there was no hope of finding whatever critter was in distress that night.  I stood listening awhile, then resigned myself to having to wait until daylight to investigate.

The next day the sound was there again.  This time, I instantly recognized it as a kitten crying.  My parents had driven in from town, so we all went to the creek to check.

I will never forget the sight; in the middle of the creek, literally on a small rock island, was a tiny black kitten yelling its lungs out.  Water completely surrounded that poor kitten.  I went back to the house and got my plastic boots and waded in, water running my boot tops, heading for the kitten on the island.

Thank God, the babe didn’t panic, but sat there and let me pick him up.  He was soaked to the skin and very cold, as it was a cold day in May.  I put him in the cat carrier we’d brought, and we started back to the house, but the crying didn’t stop.  We soon figured out, that somewhere on the creek, was another kitten.  I climbed back down the creek bank and hunted, trying to trace the new crying, and found another soaked black kitten, this time huddled underneath a pile of rocks.  I started gingerly moving rocks, while a snake swam by me, trying to get to the kitten, when I realized that the rest of the rocks might fall and kill the babe.  So I asked, “Baby, would you please come to me?”  I watched, amazed, as the baby instantly turned and walked right to my hands.

We took the two soaked babies to the house and built a fire in the furnace, and put hot water into empty soft drink bottles, fingered some food down them, and the island kitten fell fast asleep.

While our minds were trying to fathom how any monster could purposely throw kittens to drown in a creek, we soon discovered the crying again in the creek.  So we left the two babes, now in safety and warmth, and returned to the creek, but we couldn’t find the third kitten.  Its mewing was quieting, and I feared it was weakening and would die before we’d find it.  Dad walked up and down the creek, searching for the babe, and finally we figured out we were hunting on the wrong side of the creek.  At last I found the third black babe farther out the creek, away from where the others had been, crouching under a scraggly bush.  We whisked baby 3 to warmth and safety, too, and Dad spent hours, still listening at the creek, to see if any more babes were crying.

I never knew whether we got them all, or if the fiend had succeeded in drowning kittens we failed to find, but we did rescue the three.

Because of their watery origin, we decided to name them all water related names.  The first babe, Gilligan, because he came off the island; the second, Puff, for the dragon who lived by the sea, and the third, Huckleberry, after Huckleberry Finn and the river trip.

Gilligan, Puff and Huckleberry grew to be real characters.  Gilligan had a habit of throwing himself on the floor, directly in front of my feet, and rolling around and acting silly whenever I needed to cross the room.  I can’t count the times I beseeched Gilligan to move!  He was short haired and had a way of looking at me that made me know he was always thinking.  Gilligan died this past year, probably of cancer, but like his brothers, lived all his adult life with his family who cherished him.

Huckleberry died in October 2008, my Huckleberry, who was the most hyperactive of the three.  He never seemed to run out of energy, and scared the wits out of me a couple times after sneaking in the bathroom and hiding in the shelves ’til I entered the room, then diving through the air, looking like a flying black hairy vampire with those long fangs he had!

My Puff died tonight.  I feel positively wounded.  At least, while Puff was alive, I still had part of my Creeker cats.  Puff was pure love.  I always had the feeling he never forgot being on that wretched creek bank, soaked and terrified, but still trusting enough to walk into the hands of a human, after all that baby had endured at the hands of the devil who threw him and his brothers there.  Puff never stopped trusting me.  He gave me a far greater gift than I gave him.

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I do know, though, and not just believe, that Gilligan, Huckleberry and Puff are now together again in a beautiful, unimaginably awesome place with the Lord.  Animals do have souls.  God made every living thing, and He loves those animals in ways that humans can’t.

My Creeker cats are all waiting for me now, and someday, I’ll get to go to them, and if there is a creek in heaven, this time it won’t be a threat; it will be the perfect, shining gift of natural beauty that God intended creeks to be, and Gilligan, Huckleberry and Puff and I, will happily wade through it this time.