SATURDAY MEMORY

March 8, 2025

It was 1943, and it was the day before my fifth birthday. My Mom said that Patsy, one of our cats, might have kittens for my birthday. That night, I woke up around midnight. Patsy was on the bed with me, the top bunk. She was having kittens and I watched this with total fascination. She had four kittens and I named each one at once: Popper, Topper, Hopper and Flopper. I chose names that could be for both male and female kittens. I didn’t know how one knew whether they were males or females. This very potent experience may have had something to do with the genesis of my first publication, which was a limerick I wrote in the third grade:

I once had a cow named Madie

She looked like my old wife Sadie

To give milk she wouldn’t

I found out she couldn’t

For Madie was not a lady

Later, when I was 10 times older, I watched our cow, Cathy, give birth to a calf around midnight. Total fascination.