mammalian mother surrogate

at first, i thought i was hallucinating auditorially, but yes, it was true----a slight, fearful meow was indeed peeping from the side of my house. a shivering kitten stared up at me with whatever nascent eyesight it could muster at so young an age...a week or two at the most...from the basement window well. scared, dependent and hungry...seems like the way we all enter the world...an inborn spur to reach out into the world....imagine if we didn't have to...weren't forced to!

it took about 5 minutes for the kitten to warm to me. i was no feline mother, certainly...and apologized for my built-in shortcomings. but i then submitted to the situation and asked the great Whatever, 'what the hell does one do in this situation?' to my surprise, out of the nothingness, i received a silent reply, 'be its mother...' i put my head down, offering some snuggle fur. i asked my dad for a dish of milk. i imitated the kitten's peeping. that really won him over! i must have said just the right thing in cat-speak---a bit of home for the weary tourist.  he searched for the nipple on my perplexingly non-feline physiognomy...

yeow! i immedaitely empathized with breast feeding mothers throughout mammalian history as he sank his needle teeth into my fingertip! see illustration above.