Ray and Beam of Hope

By Dr. M. M. Janapriya

This room feels strangely empty. I have always used this room as the sole occupier. This was ideal for my preferred work since I retired, for diving in the ocean of thought and writing. I have never felt the solitude in any other way than a blessing enhancing and facilitating my work but today it feels a bit different. The tiny furry friend with whom I briefly shared this room bade goodbye to us in the saddest way possible. He is gone now. I made him rest in peace in our uppermost garden behind our house and just returned to the room. While I was bidding farewell to my tiny friend who gave us more joy than apprehension during the few days he and his late brother Beam spent with us I could not hold back my tears.

My daughter, whom I call Dr. Honda Hitha, is the one who really cared for the two orphaned squirrel kittens by feeding them, cleaning them and letting them have fun running around in the store-room where we discovered them first. Having said that, neither of them really ran around. You might find fault with my expression of calling their movement a waddle as they are four legged but in fact that is exactly how they moved from day one of our brief association. the storeroom is not the best place for them to have been in but they seemed to feel secure in there with a lot of hiding places in between the cardboard boxes we moved from Mount Lavinia from where we got displaced as the workmen invaded our personal spaces. It is over a year since we temporarily shifted but, courtesy the Novel Coronavirus work on our house at Mount is far from being over. With most of our stuff in boxes and with over half the furniture still at Mount we are ‘camping’ ourselves over here so we don’t visit this one store room for days sometimes weeks. This must be the reason squirrel mom decided to litter there.

We were lost as to how to care for these orphaned squirrel kittens and as such educated ourselves googling, talking to friends, etc. My wife who was initially not in favour of raising them for the fear of making them ‘domesticated’ giving them the licence to have a nibble at anything and everything in the household, soon got attracted to caring for the new found twin lives. She bought goats milk for us to feed the kittens with. They were not the greatest guzzlers of milk so we had to feed them with the help of a syringe. The little blobs that extruded from the nozzle were imbibed readily into the tiny mouths. Overripe bananas kept within their reach, a food no squirrel could resist in the wildest of their dreams virtually didn’t exist for these two.

My daughter got them out of the room a few times a day to feed them. Beam seemed friendly and advanced towards us from the word go as we entered the room. The other, however, would quickly go away and hide, a bit shy and probably insecure but at meal times they seemed quite contented in my daughter’s hand. On one fateful day, after avidly guzzling away a dinner of a 10 cc syringe full of milk between the two, we returned them to the storeroom, their new home. They seemed happy enough and we all went to sleep expecting to see them in high spirits in the morning. Instead we discovered our friendly little Beam motionless and cold. It was an extremely grim sight. Rigor Mortis had set in. His body and limbs were rigid which meant that he had been dead for a good few hours. We buried him near the same tiny grave his little brother is resting.

Why the poor squirrel kitten left us so soon was a mystery to us. Dehydration, electrolyte imbalance, pneumonia from repeated aspiration of milk into the tiny lungs were all entertained as possible causes. We rang around to get some advice as to how best to care for Ray. Now that his only surviving close relative was gone we did not want to raise Ray in the lonely storeroom.

I quickly converted an unused soiled linen basket into a kitten nursery. I made a lid for this out of a remnant piece of block board. Put on the side the basket had enough length for the kitten to move around freely. For the fear of Ray aspirating milk while trying to feed himself we stopped placing the bowl of milk inside the ‘cage’. Instead we kept a few millilitres of glucose saline for him to drink if he felt up to it. All seemed well with Ray enjoying his short waddle couple of times a day, having a few nibbles at the ripe banana which he and his late bro did not recognize a few days ago, helping himself to the milk we offered him dropwise in a syringe, till last night when I came to wish him goodnight and a good sleep.

I gently lifted him off the cloth and placed him on my palm. Initially he seemed to dislike my moving him by not releasing the grip of his legs from the cage. Having taken him out and put on my palm he moved from palm to palm and also a few inches up my fore arm. I gently stroked Ray’s head and the back and repatriated him to the comfort of the warm clothes inside his cage. He wouldn’t let me lower him down to the floor of the cage. Alarm bells started ringing at this point. He hung on to me as if to say “please don’t let me fall” probably due to a sense of unsteadiness almost all sick living beings experience.

I broke the bad news to my daughter who was so fond of them and cared for them as if she was their foster mother. She had experienced the same scenario with brother Beam the night before he bade us goodbye. We watched Ray for a few minutes before we wished him good night. We had a goodnight’s sleep and hoped Ray had the same. My daughter beat me to seeing Ray in the morning. Ray was still going but not strong. He refused milk, glucose water, banana and the lot. Appeared to be in some kind of pain. Foster mom is a doctor Honda Hitha in every sense. She is a very empathetic person and despite her very busy schedule of trying to complete an MSc dissertation which needed to be submitted three or four days’ time she took Ray out of the cage and to her room to keep him comfortable. Ray was on the floor of her bed room almost hidden inside warm clothing. He came out once but was struggling to make much ground.

By early afternoon we knew we were not winning. With Ray clinging on to her fore arm, my daughter was in tears seeing the last few moments of our little friend.

I had to now, relieve my daughter’s agony as well and hence brought Ray back to my room. I didn’t have the courage to watch him breathe the last few breaths. So, I kept him on the floor in the warmth of a few layers of cloth and let a saucer of water stand close by for Ray to drink if he wanted to. Ray became increasingly still till he became completely motionless in the early afternoon. His little heart has stopped beating. His little lungs have stopped bellowing. He was still warm but gradually became cold. He seemed to be in peace though. From a foot or so away Ray still seemed as if he was alive but what we were seeing were only his mortal remains.

Our association with you two loving creatures was very short but it seems to have had a big impact on our lives specially mine. You carved in me in stone a deep sense of caring, sharing, love, empathy endurance and tolerance. I drove my wife, your adopted grand ma, to Mount Lavinia to our house refurbishment site, a good six miles or so. On any other day I would have mumbled many swear words up and down the journey on errant drivers specially the three wheeler guys but believe me not a single yesterday. I drove as if the errant drivers were little kittens like you both needing help. A usual nightmare drive transformed itself into a pleasant drive sans any stress whatsoever. I don’t know how to thank you two enough my tiny friends. Adios Beam, Adios Ray, Adios my little friends. The short stretch of the road we travelled together has come to an end but sweet memories of you will be there forever.