One by one the kittens and their new people drove down the long driveway and past the sign on the mailbox post, "FREE KITTUNS." The ginger girl kitten was the first to be picked. Her four-year-old owner loved her very much, but the little girl accidentally injured the kitten's shoulder by picking her up the wrong way. She couldn't be blamed really - no adult had shown her the proper way to handle a kitten. She had named the kitten "Ginger" and was very sad a few weeks later when her older brother and his friends were planning in the living room and someone sat on the kitten.

The solid white boy kitten with blue eyes was the next to leave with a couple who announced even before they went down the porch steps that his name would be "Snowy." Unfortunately, he never learned his name and everyone had paid so little attention to him that nobody realized he was deaf. On his first excursion outside he was run over in the driveway by a mail truck.

The pretty gray and white girl kitten went to live on a nearby farm as a "mouser." Her people called her "the cat" and like her mother and grandmother before her she had many, many "free kittuns," but they sapped her energy. She became ill and died before her current litter of kittens was weaned.

Another brother was a beautiful red tabby. His owner loved him so much that she took him around to meet everyone in the family and her friends, and their cats, and everyone agreed that "Erik" was a handsome boy. Except his owner didn't bother to have him vaccinated. It took all of the money in her bank account to pay a veterinarian to treat him when he became sick, but the doctor just shook his head one day and said, "I'm sorry."

The solid black boy kitten grew up to be a fine example of a tomcat. The man who adopted him moved shortly thereafter and left "Tommy" where he was, roaming the neighborhood, defending his territory, and fathering many kittens until a bully of a dog cornered him.

The black and white girl kitten got a wonderful home. She was named "Pyewacket." She got the best of food, the best of care until she was nearly five years old. Then her owner met a man who didn't like cats, but she married him anyway. Pyewacket was taken to an animal shelter where there were already a hundred cats. Then one day, there were none.

A pretty woman driving a van took the last two kittens, a gray boy and a brown tiger-striped girl. She promised they would always stay together. She sold them for fifteen dollars each to a laboratory. To this day, they are still together - in a jar of alcohol.

For whatever reason - because Heaven is in a different time zone, or because not even cat souls can be trusted to travel in a straight line without meandering - all the young-again kittens arrived at Heaven's gate simultaneously. They batted and licked each other in glee, romped for a while and then solemnly marched through the gate, right past a sign lettered in gold: "YOU ARE FINALLY FREE, KITTENS."

"FREE KITTUNS" was written by Jim Willis and comes from his book "Pieces of My Heart - Writings Inspired by Animals and Nature. He has given permission to humane societies to reproduce it.

Kitten season is in full swing and the signs "FREE KITTENS" will be seen dotting the countryside. Thousands will be born and most of them will have no future. On average, more than 52,000 kittens are born each day but from spring through summer, the population explosion peaks and shelters begin overflowing with cats and kittens. The fortunate ones will eventually find safe, loving homes. But most of those precious little creatures will not, simply because there are too many kittens and not nearly enough homes for them all. Those left behind will suffer and die without ever knowing the joy of human companionship.

We simply cannot allow the misery and suffering being faced by hundreds, even thousands, of cats and kittens in our community to continue. Please do your part to put an end to the suffering. Spay and neuter your cats, keep them safely indoors, educate the uneducated, offer to help spay or neuter a stray cat. This must be a grassroots community effort otherwise in a very short time this crisis will reach epic proportions.

Carol A. Russell
Executive Director
Finger Lakes SPCA of Central New York
Auburn