"Kitten"
The summer of 1972 stands out vividly, and bittersweet in my memories as a child growing up in East Texas. I turned fourteen that spring, and had lived the entirety of my young years there, in a house supplied to us by the owner of a large cattle and horse ranch, where my Daddy worked as the foreman. Normally, the summer vacation months from school seemed to go by much too fast, but this was the summer before I was to start to high school in the fall. As I anxiously, and not so patiently, anticipated beginning my freshman year, the hot, muggy Texas summer days were dragging by at the pace of a crippled snail. This was also the summer that Kitten died.
Summer was the busiest time of the year at the ranch, not that there was much of a slow time on a ranch that size, at anytime of the year..... but summer was when there was the most work to be done. My Daddy was a firm believer in "an idle mind is the devil's workshop", and my two brothers and I were taught the values and ethics of a hard days work from the time we could sit up on the back of a horse. This firmness was tendered with my Daddy's gentle, loving nature when it came to teaching..... his children and his horses. Those were the values passed to him from his father... my Grandpa....... my hero, and the man that taught me just about every single thing I know about horses.
My Grandpa, being of American Indian and Irish decent, was not a real big man.... about 5 foot 10 inches, a hundred and sixty pounds or so.... but he was larger than life to me. I loved him from the top of his old tattered cowboy hat, that never left his head.... except at the dinner table and in church, to the tips of those pointy toed boots he always wore. I loved the way he smelled, like horses and sweet feed, and the way his spurs jingled when he walked across our wooden floors. His legs were bowed from spending more time in the saddle than he ever did anywhere else, as was the cause of every pair of his jeans being worn out thin in the seat, and he walked with a little limp from an old horse related hip injury. His hair was thinning on top, a little long on the sides, and he seldom shaved on a regular basis. His skin was the color of tanned leather, and had about the same texture. His huge hands were scarred and ruff as sandpaper, often still looking dirty even right after he washed them, and he always had a rip or tear somewhere on his shirt. I adored my Grandpa, and everything about him. He loved me just as strongly as I did him, and our bond was intensified with the mutual love of horses. I was exactly three days and ten hours old the first time I was taken for a ride on horseback.... by my Grandpa and his horse Kitten.
My Moma says I was "hooked" from that day forward, and most likely I have spent more of my life on the back of a horse than not. This was mostly due to the fact that my Grandpa was "hooked" too from that day....... right around my little finger... so my Moma says. I followed Grandpa every step he took, as far back as I can remember, and where I couldn't step.... he carried me. He taught me how to whistle real loud to call the horses up, how to whittle a horse figurine from an old piece of wood, and that a good horse is more valuable than anything you could ever have here on this Earth. Not that there were any bad horses according to his philosophy, just horses that had been treated bad by humans.
Horses was all my Grandpa knew, mostly all that he cared about too, except for my Grandma, and family, and horses was just about all he talked about. Which was fine with me, because I could listen to him talk for hours about his years of riding, raising and training horses. I loved listening to his stories, but actually watching him in action was pure poetry in motion. There wasn't a horse in the world that could resist him, staring deep into their eyes, calling to them with his soft coaxing voice, the tantalizing touch of those big strong hands in all the right places, and the slow, gentle willing of his way with them. If there ever was a horse whisperer, it was my Grandpa. He was more at home in the barn, on the back of a horse, or at the other end of a rope from a horse, than he ever was in the house. My Grandma said more than once, if old Kitten had been human, my Grandpa would have divorced her long ago and married that horse. He spent more time with that old horse than he did with her anyway. Grandpa would just chuckle a little, and tell her not to talk like that, Kitten wasn't jealous of her. I only seen my Grandpa cry twice in my whole life, and that was at my Grandma's funeral in 1970, and that hot awful summer day when we buried old Kitten.
Kitten was only 15.2 hands, beautiful conformation, but a little jug headed, as is common in her mustang heritage. In the winter she was shaggy and looked almost black, but in the summer slicked off to a dazzling line back buckskin with black tiger striped legs. She was all muscles and steel, quick as lightning, sure footed as a mountain goat, rode and handled like a dream, and was gentle as a kitten. Her sire was a wild mustang stallion, who my Grandpa only saw once, and said she looked exactly like, and her dam was a blanket bay Appaloosa mare that he bought for $2 in 1936, from an Indian in Wyoming.
My Grandpa watched as Kitten came into this world in 1937, all legs and ears, wobbly, and curious, at a very scary time when the Great Depression still loomed starvation and hard times on this nation's people. Grandpa was thirty years old then, dirt poor, with a wife and five children to feed. As soon as Kitten was weaned, her mother and most of the other horses had to be sold. There was no work, and no money in Wyoming, so my Grandpa moved his family to Texas. The horses that were left soon went one by one, traded and sold for food, land, and crop seeds as Grandpa tried to make a living farming, all except for one.... his Kitten. Grandpa said he just had a feeling about Kitten, and could no more sale her than he could one of his children.
He taught Kitten to pull a wagon, carry a pack, and used her to plow his first crop field. She rode little children on her back, carefully stepped over them under her feet, and stretched out in a run when Grandpa needed to feel the freedom of the wind in his hair. She gave birth to his first team of work mules, and later to the horses that would help my Grandpa make a name for himself in horse training. Grandpa owned many more horses over years, but Kitten remained his favorite, and the most dependable when he needed the job done right...... what ever it might be.
By the time I came along in 1958, and took my first ride on her, Kitten was twenty one years old, and still going strong. Her last foal, a blanket bay Appaloosa filly, was born in 1962. We named her Plaudett's Heidi, the first and only Appaloosa colored foal that Kitten ever delivered, even though my Grandpa bred her to several very colorful Appaloosa stallions. Heidi was given to me as my first "big" horse when I was eight years old. She proved to be just as great and as versatile a horse as her dam. I rode her on trail rides, rodeo grande entries, playday events, and once down the middle of the main hallway at school on Western Day. She was bomb proof just like Kitten. Heidi died in 1992 of old age and is buried here on my property.
My summer of waiting to go to high school was dampened considerably by Kitten's death that year. She was thirty five ...... very old for a horse. She had been sick several times over the past few years, but always seemed to perk back up. Grandpa had her feed special made, crushed up and fine so she didn't have to chew a lot. She stayed in the barn most of the time, except on really nice days, and would still occasionally try to gallop up to the house if she heard anyone outside. Her beautiful buckskin coat was just about all gray by then, with long streaks of gray in her mane and tail. Her back was starting to sway some, and she looked a little leaner than usual, but she still had a sparkle in her eyes, and a soft nuzzle for anyone who took the time to stop and say something to her. My Grandpa sat out in the barn with her quite a bit, and even more after my Grandma passed away. He even had my brothers move his old easy chair down to the barn when he got a new one, and we would often find him sleeping in the old chair next to Kitten's stall.
Kitten passed away quietly that day..... with my Grandpa holding her head in his lap. He didn't tell anyone for a little while, he just sat there holding her, and stroking her neck and talking over old memories with her. When he came up to the house I could tell there was something wrong. His head was hanging low, his steps were slow, almost dragging, he was holding that old tattered cowboy hat in his hand, and wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. He walked past us, almost like he was in a daze, said " Old Kittens gone", as he went by and headed toward the tractor barn.
My brothers and I ran down to the barn, as my Daddy went with my Grandpa to get the front end loader. I couldn't believe that Kitten was dead..... our beautiful, sweet, wonderful Kitten. She was lying there, all still and I called her name and she didn't move. I laid on top of her and cried and begged her to open her eyes, but she just laid there lifeless. I hugged her, and rubbed her neck in her favorite spot, feeling her soft coat and burying my face in her long mane. Even in death she was the picture of grace and beauty..... our gentle Kitten.
Daddy and Grandpa came with the tractor, and they pulled me away from Kitten. My brothers helped them roll her gently on a tarp, and they pulled her out to the front of the barn. My Daddy lowered the front end loader of the tractor, and Grandpa and the boys slid her and the tarp on it. Grandpa told us all to say our goodbyes to Kitten there. He would be the only one going to take her to her final resting place. He said he had watched her come into this world and he wanted to be the last one to see her leave it. I sat in Kitten's stall and cried as the sound of the tractor got fainter and fainter, and then was gone..... just like Kitten.
I started high school at the end of summer. It wasn't near the big deal I had expected..... or maybe I had just grown up a little more over that summer. Grandpa still slept in his old chair down at the barn occasionally, and there was a new horse in Kitten's stall now. Life hadn't changed much at the ranch with Kitten's passing, it rolled on steady and strong day after day, just like Kitten had for all those years. I did notice my Grandpa was beginning to look older, and he moved a little slower now. His main conversation was still horses, and he told me that the pretty little line back buckskin filly in Kitten old stall was coming on nicely, and had the makings of a good horse..... but then, Grandpa said that about every horse he ever knew.