Freckles the Hussy

I wrote a little while ago about the pregnant cat, Freckles, who showed up abandoned on my doorstep as soon as I moved in. Well, Freckles had her litter a week or two ago (I'm not sure exactly when because she disappeared for awhile) and I've been waiting for her to bring the kittens out into the open. Today she started behaving really strangely. She was meowing a lot, for one thing, and seemed to want more company than usual. Eventually she started walking down the driveway, pausing every few feet to roll in the dirt and let me scratch her chin. I thought that maybe she wanted me to follow her, that she was finally ready to show me her babies! So we slowly walked down my driveway, where she turned right, toward my neighbor Mike's house, so I figured OK, maybe she had her kittens in one of his outbuildings. Nope, she walked right past Mike's sheds. And then, on our left, we came to the cemetery and Freckles strolled right in under the fence. This is when I started thinking she might be possessed and I started wondering what the hell I was doing. But I'd been following her for five minutes already, I was committed, so I opened the gate and started stepping over graves. Then she wandered back out of the cemetery and I was relieved that I wouldn't have to start searching tombs for week-old kittens. Maybe they're in one of the little maintenance sheds? No. A car pulled up to the cemetery while I was chatting to Freckles, asking her where her babies were, generally looking and sounding like a crazy person, and a very nice old lady got out of the car and asked if I thought it was going to rain as she started to pull out flowers for graves. I ignored Freckles, and tried to sound vaguely civilized for a moment until the lady disappeared into the cemetery. It was at this point Freckles took me over the edge of a cliff. Sort of. She started climbing down a very steep hill, at the bottom of which is an old log cabin where my friend Abe, and his trapper father and Native American mother, (seriously I have to tell you about them sometime) used to live. OK, so maybe the kittens are in there? I looked at the slope dubiously. I was wearing my most comfortable, my most floppy flip flops, not exactly designed for off-trail adventures, but the thought of poor Freckles' kittens spurred me on, and I gingerly started following her over the loose dirt covered in thick layers of very slippery pine needles. And she stopped. And she rolled around some more. And she meowed pathetically. And she started BACK UP the hill. And it finally occurred to me (I can be slow sometimes), this cat isn't trying to show me her kittens. This cat is psychotic and in heat again. Hussy. So after I stumbled amid much cursing back up to the top of the hill I left the little brat, who'd led me on a wild kitten chase, lying in the dirt beside the graveyard and tramped back home. UGH!