One of the things I enjoy around here is that kossacks really love their animals and share pictures and stories about them. It is one of those warm connecting experiences we all relate to in one way or another. At my age I've had numerous pets in my life and I have decided to tackle a series of stories about them to honor their place in our family's life. I'm not going to take them in any particular order, but this one is about a little feral cat that had a most profound and amusing effect on us in her few short years and the very strange event that happened after she crossed that rainbow bridge.
Alice the Cat
Quite small, black with a white mark on her chest and whiskers on one side of her face, Alice came to us by way of a friend. At the time we had a lovely basset hound (that will be in another story) that had just given birth to one puppy and prolapsed her uterus in the process. Due to emergency care she didn't bond well with her puppy and had to be encouraged to feed and spend time with the puppy. I thought perhaps a kitten would help keep the puppy company so I had my friend bring the small bundle of black fur over one day to see what would happen. She had been feeding the kitten as a stray for a couple of weeks, but due to her lease could not have a pet in her apartment.
The puppy liked the kitten, the kitten liked the puppy but, Rosie, our basset hound was completely besotted with the kitten and likewise for the kitten. Wherever the kitten was that was where Rosie wanted to be. This did help her bond and care for her puppy, as she loved to groom them both and curl up and sleep with them. The weeks flew by and the puppy left for her new home. Rosie didn't seem to mind as she had Alice to mother.
The feral nature of Alice readily accepted the family and enjoyed the affection of the five of us as well as her pal Rosie. She often made the rounds at night doing bed checks before settling at the foot of my side of the bed.
When Spring came and the backdoor remained open, Alice started to explore the garden using the flap we had installed in the door for the dog. She stayed within the confines of the back yard for a short time before she found her way over the fence into the larger area. When we took Rosie for evening walks she would follow along beside us going well outside of what you would think of a cat's normal range. She appeared fearless and was completely incensed one day when I tried to put a leash on her for the walk. Needless to say, that idea was quickly abandoned.
One day the kids came home from the elementary school to tell me that Alice had walked them to school. That really surprised my as the school was about six blocks away and had to busy one-way streets in the route. She had been in and out of the house that day so I knew she made it back safely. A couple of weeks went by and one day I looked out the window watching the children walk up the hill after school and Alice was trotting along side them. They said she was waiting on the corner across the street for them when they got out of school. After that day she stuck to a routine of walking them to school and escorting them home. I always wondered how she learned to tell time.
One day she didn't come home after the morning escort to school. I wasn't too concerned at the time, but when she didn't come home with them that afternoon we all worried. After questioning the kids it came to pass that one of the crossing guards had expressed a concern that Alice was a lost cat. When they assured her that Alice belonged to them and walked them to school every day, she was still skeptical. We posted notices, call the school, canvassed the neighborhood and checked the shelters. One morning about three days later I spotted her coming up the hill at a good clip with a very annoyed look on her face. It took a lot of stroking to calm her down and Rosie was thrilled to have her home and after a good licking they settled down for a nice long nap on the couch with Alice curled up next to Rosie's warm tummy.
That summer, my husband was a coach for our son's Cub Scout softball team that played some of their games at the same elementary school. On evening I looked up from the play to see her sitting outside the fence watching the game. I have no idea how she knew we were down at the school as we had driven to the school with all the kids and equipment piled in the car. When I picked her up after the game to put in the car to take home with us, she was absolutely livid with me for the insult that she couldn't make her way home by herself. It took her a few days to forgive me my trespasses.
Being a feral cat, Alice, liked to do a little hunting and lots of exploring. It wasn't unusual to walk into the back yard and find 'presents' of mice and the occasional bird. She was pretty good about not bring them into the house until on day I heard a commotion on the back door landing. When I investigated, there she sat with a pigeon in her mouth that was nearly as big as she was. She dropped her treasure while looking very smug. When I picked up the pigeon its neck flopped over and looked like it was broken. I took the bird out to the trashcans and placed it inside. The next day when I took the trash out I got quite a surprise as when I took off the lid the pigeon flew out and took off. I guess the bird had merely fainted.
One of the other things Alice liked to do was climb clear up to the top of the roof and perch at the peak to survey her domain. She had great fun one day meowing at me while I looked all over the yard tying to figure out where she was. Finally I looked up and she once again had a smug little smile on her face while sitting in a very dainty pose at the very end of the peak. It wasn't until some time later that I saw how she managed to get up there and back down.
She had an orange tabby for a swain who took to following her every step. She started to come up with unique ways to dump him with comical results. She was fixed but I don't think he ever figured that out. One day I heard a pitiful yowl coming from the back yard. When I walked out into the yard she was just sitting there with a 'who me' look and when I heard the yowl again, I looked up to see her friend, Casey, stranded at the top of the roof. She had led him up there and left him in a lurch. She twitch her tail and left the yard as if to say, 'my work here is done.' I waited for about an hour to see if Casey would figure out his way down, but he was not the brightest cat in the neighborhood. Finally, I wrangled the twenty-two foot extension ladder into position, climbed up and rescued the cat. When I brought him to the ground I gave him a warning that if that happened again he was on his own for a way down. I also warned him not to let her lead him into trouble, but he didn't listen which brought about an even more hilarious episode complete with slapstick pratfalls.
The house we lived in was and old brick bungalow a half block from a major city park. Way in one corner of the park was a pond that was famous for crawdad fishing. The kids use to take off with bits of liver or bacon and string to catch crawdads in the summer and of course Alice went along to observe.
I remember it was a brutal August night after a string of hot days that left the house pretty uncomfortable. We left a small side window in the dinning room open for the cat to come in and out at night. We had a big box fan in the doorway of our bedroom going full blast and my husband was snoring on one side of me and Rosie was curled up in the corner snoring away, too. I was just barely asleep when I felt a motion on the bed that indicated that Alice was home from her nightly rounds. Then I felt a second motion. All of a sudden Rosie stopped snoring and I could hear from her tags jingling that she was awake as well. And then I heard that pitiful cry of Casey's and realized that he had followed her into the house - and didn't know his way out! Rosie began to growl and I knew I didn't have much time to avert chaos and wake up the whole house.
Remember, I said it was hot? Very, very hot. So that meant it was one of the very few occasions when my children were young that I was sleeping 'in the buff'. First of all I shot out of bed and heard the cats running out of the room through the narrow opening that was left between the fan and the doorjamb. Not wanting to take the time to remove the fan I decided just to leap over it. Well, I was half-asleep so my reflexes were too. My foot caught the edge of the casing and down I went in a naked sprawl in the hallway. The dog came racing out behind me barking and growling. But the fun wasn't over yet. After I picked myself up I was chasing the cat and dog shadows into the dinning room when my foot met something cold and crunchy. Yep, they had been crawdad hunting by moonlight and she brought my home a present and somehow placed perfectly so I would step on it.
I somehow managed to get Casey out the window and when I finally turned the light on there she sat with her Mona Lisa smile proud as could be, saying, 'now wasn't that fun?' I picked up the crawdad and flung it out the window. I then shut the window so she couldn't go bring it back into the house. I got everyone settled down, picked up the fan and looked in amazement at my sleeping husband. Yep, he slept through all that commotion just like a babe. Barking dog, crashing fan, yowling cat and shrieking wife when I stepped on the crawdad, and he never heard a thing!
Sleeping was, of course one of her favorite things to do as it is for any cat, but she chose some unusual venues for that activity. As I said before, the warmth provided by Rosie's tummy was a favorite, my loom with a half woven web was also a favorite place which had the bonus of making me weave off my yardage more quickly so it wouldn't have a permanent dent in the middle of the weaving. However, one of her strangest places to nap was in other people’s cars that parked along the street at the side of out house. Since parking was limited in the park we frequently had cars lined up along side our house in the summer. To beat the oven-like effect, the owners often left a window down a couple of inches. Remember this was over thirty years ago when people felt comfortable doing things like that.
One day I looked out the kitchen window and did a double take as I could see her curled up in the back seat of the car, sleeping peacefully. I had to take a treat out to coax her out of the car. It wasn't long before I saw her repeat this routine. I feared that some unsuspecting car owner was going to drive off with my cat someday, but I was fortunate that that never happened. She was wily and wise my little black cat.
One Fall day when she was just three years old, I noticed that she wasn't sleeping in her usual places around the house but staying down in the basement. She also seemed off her feed. When I tried to feed her something else and she turned up her nose at it I decided it was time for a trip to the vet. She was pretty docile in the car, which worried me, as I knew she didn't care for car rides. The vet came in and examined her and said he needed to check her blood. When he came back I knew something was very wrong from the look on his face. He explained that she had contracted feline leukemia, which at the time was a new disease with no cure and no vaccine. He said I could take her home and watch her die or put her down right then. He estimated that she had maybe a week or two left. Well, not wanting her to suffer I said go ahead and my little black cat that had given me so much joy and amusement slipped away in my arms while tears poured down my cheeks.
I'll never know how I managed to drive across town in rush hour traffic and make it home in one piece, but I really lost it when I walked in the door and announced that we didn't have a cat anymore. I was a mess, the kids were a mess, Rosie was confused and dismayed and my husband completely stunned. We gradually made our way through the coming days in that zombie like feeling that comes with the loss of a beloved pet. Since there was no cure and no vaccine for this new illness at the time we decided not to replace our beloved Alice, as we had no idea if whatever caused it may somehow be lurking in our home. Poor Rosie glued herself to my side and the kids really missed Alice walking them to and from school.
Then one day about two months later the strangest thing happened. My husband was recovering from having his impacted wisdom teeth pulled and we were sitting in chairs in front of a cheery fire quietly reading and staring at the flames. I heard a familiar meow and before I even thought about it I was on my way to the door to let the cat in. Just as my hand touch the knob I wondered what in the world I was thinking, as we no longer had a cat. I opened the door and there sat a small black kitten that sounded just like Alice. My husband heard my gasp and turned around to see what I was doing; Rosie woke from her nap on the couch and sat up, and into the room trotted the kitten like she owned the place.
My husband asked the rhetorical question about where had the kitten come from. My obvious answer was I hadn't a clue. Rosie froze to her spot and just watched. The kitten made the rounds going to some of the very same spots that Alice used to frequent. I sat back down in my chair and the kitten came over and crawled up in my lap, rubbed my hand for a pet, crawled across the arm to my husband's lap, repeated the gestures with him. Then the kitten headed for the couch and Rosie and rubbed against her. There was such a look of longing on Rosie's face that I asked my husband if maybe we should keep the kitten. He had no objection. She looked and acted so much like Alice it was uncanny.
Then the kitten went to the door and meowed to be let out, just like Alice used to do. So I opened the door and let her leave. The kids arrived home a short time later. I asked them if they had seen a black kitten in the neighborhood lately. They hadn't. I asked them if they knew of anyone's cat having kittens, they said no. I told them what had happened and we all bundled up to go look around the neighborhood to see if we could find the kitten. No luck. They went to school the next day and asked around. I put some food out on the porch that was left untouched.
The mystery of the black kitten was never solved, but we all felt better after the visit and were convinced that for whatever reason, Alice came that day to say goodbye and heal our hurt.