The Hunnicutt Homestead

A Rabbit in the Hand is Worth Two in the Bush

Greetings!  We have had a very exciting week here.  Our cat, Bella, gave birth to 4 beautiful little kittens and is back to her skinny svelte self.  (I wish it was that easy for the rest of us!)  Two of the kittens look identical with mostly grey and a bit of white, just like their mama.  The third was a calico, and the fourth was all black.  We watched Bella give birth in the laundry basket of our laundry room.  She preferred for me to stay with her and pet her, for if I left the room she would follow me meowing until I returned to the laundry room with her!  I understand that this is unusual for cats as they typically hide and do not want to have anything to do with anyone during their queening process.  She was in labor for 4 hours and did a great job, meowing during the pushing but generally quiet and dignified. 

I had checked a book out from the library about cats as this was a first for me to see kittens born and I'm glad I did.  First, I learned that kittens are often not identical because a cat can mate with different males during the period she is in heat and thus have one litter with kittens from different fathers!

Second, I learned that after each kitten is birthed, the mother must lick the membrane surrounding her kitten open so that it can breathe.  She then must bite the umbilical cord and expel the after birth for each kitten, which she then eats.  It was important to make sure that for every kitten the afterbirth was expelled from her body.  By the fourth kitten, Bella was tired.  She wasn't licking the membrane open so I rubbed it open with a washcloth, fearing that if I didn't the kitten would die  She then finished cleaning him (or her) up.  The afterbirth was still connected to Bella's womb through the kittens umbilical cord and after waiting it wasn't being expelled.  I then had to take a clean rag and tug on it to pull it from her body.  As I began this she meowed and then pushed it the rest of the way out.  She took care of the rest.

On a different note, we managed to plant our 45 strawberry plants and get them covered before it started to rain very hard.  This morning as we were drinking our tea, S looked out the window and noticed a large rabbit hopping in the garden towards the strawberry plants.  I was amazed as our dogs were approximately 7 feet away.  This rabbit must have been very hungry!  Needless to say, the dogs couldn't stand it and broke through the electric fence to give chase.  We ran around to the front yard and opened the door to see just how far they were going.  To my surprise, Blackjack stood shaking with excitement at the glass door.  Lightning was a several feet behind him with the rabbit in his mouth.  They had returned to show us their prize!  We praised the dogs and told the kids how glad we were that the rabbit would not be eating up all of our hard work in the garden.

S is our in the barn now skinning the rabbit and I will be making a fresh rabbit stew for our lunch.  After digging through various books I thought it might be fun to use the following recipe taken from an antique book I had purchased.  The book was published in 1829 so the language is a bit outdated.  The book is titled MacKenzie's Five Thousand Receipts in all the Useful and Domestic Arts.   Here it is for your reading pleasure with identical spelling and wording from page 173:

A tureen of hodge-podge of all different sorts:

Take either a brisket of beef, mutton, steaks, whole pigeons, rabbits cut in quarters, veal or poultry; boil a long time over a slow fire in a short liquid, with some onions, carrots, parsnips,turnips, celery, a fagot of parsley, green shallots, one clove of garlick, 3 of spices, a laurel leaf, thyme, a little basil, large thick sausages, and thin broth or water; when done, drain the meat, and place it upon a dish intermixed with roots, sift and skim the sauce, reduce some of it to a glaze, if desired;glaze the meat with of it, then add some gravy on the same stew-pan and broth sufficient to make sauce enough with pepper and salt : sift it in a sieve, and serve upon the meat.  If brisket of beef is used, let it be half done before putting in the roots, which should be scalded first, as it makes the broth more palatable.

I won't be using my fireplace today, but I can just picture a woman in a long sleeved dress with long skirts, stoking up a large fire with her iron pot hanging over the top, water boiling.  She would also have bread rising in front of the fire and perhaps a pie in the beehive oven!  Most of the receipts or recipes in this book measure ingredients in weight, so all of her dry goods would be stored in bulk, and likely she would be sending her children to fetch the various items she needed.  What a life!  I think I'll be using my crockpot today.....

Have a great week! 

This is my first visit to your blog...

{ 02:03, Sunday, April 6, 2008 } { Posted by meadow }

and I really like it. It's not often I am intrigued enough to go back to the beginning and want to read through all the posts:-) I hope to be able to do so, but so far made it to May 2007 along with the few on top of this page..

Coincidentally, my sister lives in Englewood, OH. We lived in Dayton for a little over a year, before coming back to MI. We just passed through the Troy countryside on our way to Englewood last weekend. We take a Troy exit, and then the backroads to Englewood, because it's the quickest route:-)

Edited by meadow on Sunday, April 6, 2008 at 01:04