I help turtles across the road. I don't see as many now, but every spring when I'm driving around; especially close to the river, I do see them.

I park my car by the side of the road and dash out in the traffic, hoping some idiot won't hit me, and being a shield for the turtle and I grab the turtle and sprint to the side of the road he is heading and set him far back from the road, close to the river, so he can make his way to safety.

One time when I did this I returned to my car to find a short little man standing by it; he was almost elflike. His English was not good and my Spanish was worse, but he pointed to the sky and smiled and said "his eye is on you" and I understood that. Now I have no beliefs in gods, but I do not denigrate his and it was the thought that counted.

It made me feel good to find a kindred spirit by the side of the road and I carry the memory of his smile in my mind today.

Many years ago when my older boy was young he had a turtle that lived in a wading pool in the backyard one summer. Jamie had loved and cared for that turtle all summer, changing his water and giving him new rocks to climb on and feeding him catfood, which he seemed to like, moving him into shade when he thought it was too hot.

It was a wild turtle and as winter approached I was afraid that we wouldn't care for him right in the cold weather; so I broached to Jamie the idea that we should set him free and Jamie, always loving the turtle and with his best interests in mind, agreed.

We live in a town with rivers and creeks so one Sunday in October we drove to an immense city park that an enormous spring feeds into. In fact, the coldest pool in the world is located there, fed by the natural springs. It has tall waving grass growing on the bottom. We walked way into the woods along the creek, away from people, with him carrying his turtle, and when we felt it sufficiently safe and isolated he walked down to the creekside and set the turtle by the water.

The turtle paused for a moment as Jamie returned to my side. Then he slipped into the water that was his home and we watched him make his way to a rock. We took our eyes off him for a minute and when we looked back he was gone. I could tell Jamie didn't want to leave without one more good bye so we stood by the creek for a long while, searching with our eyes, and then we saw him. He hadn't left. He was just lower on the rock with just his head out of the water, his color blending in and him so still we had overlooked him. Jamie said his last farewell and we both felt good about the little turtle.

Years later I told this story to his wife and she told me that once, late at night, as she was returning home she saw him in his car in front of her. He pulled into a neighborhood park by their house that had a pond in the middle. She just couldn't figure out what he was doing and paused her car in the street to watch. She saw him open the trunk of his car and remove a turtle, which he took to the pond in the park.

Every year at Christmas I try to get cute things for my children's stockings. One thing I always get is a turtle for Jamie. Not a real turtle, sometimes a stone turtle, others a wooden one, once a turtle shaped car deodorizer to hang in his car, but always there is a turtle.

Each year, as he empties his stocking, he finds the turtle and he takes it out and unwraps it and holds it in his hand and says, "my turtle".

For one moment then, once a year, he is my little boy again.

Once, many, many years ago I walked into the garage and found an orange cat sitting with his back to me.

I frequently find cats I don't know around my home; I don't know exactly why. I theorize it's because so many cats live with me, but they are not very welcoming to strangers, so I discount that. I really don't know why they come.

I said to this cat, "Why, hello. What are you doing here?" and he turned his massive tomcat head and looked at me over his shoulder. When I saw his face I literally took a step back and caught my breath. I had never in my life seen such a disfigured face on an animal. He had a harelip that went all the way up through his nose and displaced his nostrils. He also had a cleft palate. He looked large and healthy because of his bushy, long hair, but when one touched him one could tell he was undernourished.

For a stray cat who obviously had not had an easy life he was very comfortable with most humans. I called him Frankie, for Frankenstein.

He preferred to remain outdoors, roaming around, but would always come when I called, for food. I left the garage door open a few inches, so he could seek shelter and protection when he needed to. One night it was very, very cold, icy and some snow, which is unusual for our area; so I brought him inside. The man to whom I was then married was not an animal person, one of the many reasons we are no longer married, but he never did anything cruel, even when Frankie used his tool box in the garage for a potty box.

That night when I forced Frankie in he roamed around so that I had to let him back out, making a warm bed for him in the garage, where he could feel free. I was reading in the living room when that husband went to bed and I heard a horrified yell from the bedroom. I ran in there and discovered that he had discovered that Frankie had peed on his pillow. Now cats will do that when displeased, but what the man kept asking was, "Why my pillow? Yours is right there. Why my tool box, when he could have gone to the yard?" Obviously no one not an animal person could realize how psychic cats are.

Once, Frankie got a cold, which was not good for one with nostrils like his. I took him to the vet and got him some antibiotics, etc. The vet was fascinated with him, as was I, because usually in the animal world, such aberrations of nature do not survive, but he had.
I can't remember exactly how old the vet thought him, but not young, possibly seven or eight years.

Frankie didn't live with us long, less than a year. One night when I called him to supper he did not come; so I sent my older son out to look for him and he found Frankie, under some bushes by the side of the house, where he had laid down and died. It was not due to trauma, there was no physical damage and no blood draining from natural body openings to indicate internal damage. He had just laid down under the bush and died. He had not appeared sick to me in the days before his death. It seemed it was just his time to go to sleep.

I was very sad and comforted myself, as people do, that for his last days he was never hungry and had a safe shelter from the dangers of the world when he wanted or needed.

But the strange thing, as I remember Frankie, is that I cannot picture his disfigurement anymore. I think of him as a beautiful cat and although I can recall that I was shocked the first time I saw him; he became so familiar to me that I cannot recall the feeling of the shock.

I am reminded of a Jacques Cousteau show I saw about octopusses, or is it octopi? I never know. They are so foreign to me and their looks so strange that they frighten me. In the show, however, the divers held them and let them wrap around their hands and bodies and heads and when they took off in their graceful glides the divers swam along side and stroked them. I was charmed and wished I could stroke an octopus and I realized that I was only frightened because I had no usual contact with them. If I saw or touched one every day they would become familiar and familiarity, far from always breeding contempt, also breeds comfort.

And so it was with Frankie. To most, and to me at first, he was shockingly disfigured and startling, even ugly, compared to usual cats, but as I got to know him I never saw his public face and we found comfort in the acceptance of each other. To me Frankie was beautiful, with a quirky personality and desire to survive that I could only imagine, and he let me see the Frankie who really was, and let me stroke him, as the divers stroked the octopus. Thank you, Frankie, for coming to teach me such a lesson.

Kindly visitors, I have not blogged much lately, but I was surprised to see how many visitors had looked at my blog over the last few months. I know, from visiting blogs myself, that I seldom go beyond the first page; and if that is true of you I feel you are missing some of the best.

So, I ask you to search for and read some of my favorites that are found further into the blog than you may be going.

* The Christmas Rat
* The Snake and the Prissy Bitch: A Love Story
* In Memorium: The Farm Dog and the Circus Dog
* My Daddy and Animals
* My Cousin Bobby and Duncan Griffin
* Once I Lived Near Water
* Little Brother and the Really Snake

Thank you for taking the time to read these and I will welcome any comments you choose to make. I write these to preserve the memories, and for you.

One night about two weeks ago as I was going out late in the dark to put out the food I leave for the 'possums and raccoons I am lucky enough to live around, I saw a shadow whip from the bushes and under a car, flitting so fast I wasn't sure what it was; or if it was anything more than the shadow of a branch, tossed by the wind, caused by the moon.

But I stood very still and watched the shadows under the car and one shifted and moved and I saw a long skinny tail before it was tucked around a body and I knew. There was a shadow cat in my yard, hiding in my bushes, called there by what I don't know; the presence of the cats who live with me, the aura of my home, the love in my heart?

I went on around the building and deposited the wild creature food and returned. The shadow was no longer under the car, but I knew it was not far. I prepared a bowl of food and returned to the bushes and the Shadow, faster than I could see or blink, was out of the bushes and under the car. I shook the bowl, to get him used to the sound of food, and placed it under the bush and left. I watched from the door as the Shadow, moving from shadow to shadow, seeking protection from his own kind, approached the bowl and settled down to eat, and I went in so as not to disturb his meal.

Since then, most nights, the Shadow is there, waiting for the food. He disappears, anonymous in the crowd of moonlit shadows, when I approach with the food, but when I have withdrawn about 10 feet he will come back out and crouch by the bowl, but he won't start eating until I have gone. On nights when he is not there, at least not that I can see, I just leave the bowl; knowing he will come later and if not him, some other hungry creature will eat the food that I leave like an offering to a kindly god that never existed.

When I go out with the food I croon, "purdy, purdy, kit cat, kit cat" because you cannot call shadows with the loud, fast "kitty, kitty" that I use to call the cats who live with me. You must call shadows soft and low, like a lullaby, crooning the call, calming the spirit.

Oh, Shadow, you are so fearful and you are so lost. You never knew my Daddy, but I did; and he was the master shadow charmer and I learned from him well. Someday you will eat when I am there and someday you will let me stroke your body; and even if you never do I will always leave the food and always call you, softly in the night.

The thought of the shadow cat eating the food that I put out makes me feel warm and relaxed, like listening to Bob Seger sing, or floating in the ocean, or falling asleep after sex with someone I wanted, even if it's only for one night, especially if it's only for one night.

I have heard of moon shadows and I have seen moon shadows, but now I know that one feels a heart shadow.

"Kindness to an animal will bring its own reward."

When I wrote my last post I didn't mention any but personal animal names, but since then I have remembered some names that I really loved. They are names of famous racehorses, all from quite awhile ago, but none of the names I hear now can match them.

The first I always was taken by was Native Dancer. Isn't that a great name for a horse? The next was Whirlaway, but the very best of all was Carry the Mail. In a book I've been writing for years there is a horse named Revenant. And there's always "Old Stewball", who never drank water, but only drank wine.

I once read that Napoleon's cavalry troops fed their horses bread dipped in wine before a battle, but that's a story for another post.

There is a show on the Home and Garden Network here called "If Walls Could Talk". It is about people moving into old houses, one or two hundred years old, and finding artefacts and papers left by previous owners and the fascinating tales behind them. In one show an elderly man had lived for years alone, except for his cats, in the family home where he had grown up. He had so loved his housemates that he had put a memorial stone in the family cemetary plot with their names on it. One of the cats was named Brother and I was charmingly shocked, because one of the cats I live with now is called Brother. This coincidence made me think of the names of all the animals I have lived with and I decided to share them with you, along with some things I remember about them.

Two early family pets that I don't remember were a dog called Terry and a cat named Rebecca. Both of these animals also traveled with my father on his ship when he was in the Navy. I remember being told how Terry fell off the ship when it was docked in China and several sailors jumping in the water to retrieve him. Rebecca kept my father company on the LST he commanded during the war and he wanted to name me Rebecca, but my mother wouldn't name me after a cat. I have mixed feelings about Rebecca being on that ship. I don't think it right to knowingly put animals in danger, which being on a ship in wartime certainly was. I keep thinking of the animals on the Titanic; Astor's dog Kitty and the pack of fox hounds Billy somebody was bringing back from England are the ones I know about, but there might have been more.

From my father's childhood I know there were many animals, but I only know the names of two; the hound Villa and the cow called Baby. My mother's family did not ever have pets, but she did mention a black horse she and her sister used to ride called Coalie.

The next animal I remember is a dog named Rusty who lived with us in Cuba. He also died there. And I remember the feral mama cat who lived in our yard and who helped my father teach me about animals. I remember her kittens and how my father found homes for them all.

There was a gray cat named Sweet William, called Willy, whose name was also Moseby because gray cats are always named Moseby and another tom who lived with us at the same time named Jughead, because of his enormous head. At the same time these cats were with us Miss Fluff also joined us, but she stayed for years, much longer than Willy and Jughead. She had a kitten who didn't live called JP, jr. because he looked like Jughead and we assumed he was the father. (Jughead's middle name was Percival.) She mourned so when her kitten died that my Daddy had her spayed, which was more unusual in that socially incorrect time.

In Cuba we also had a dog named Lady who returned with us to the states and lived for 15 years. Also in my childhood I remember Duchess and Tiger, two other dogs who lived into my adulthood.

I remember a Siamese named Princess Ting who slept with me at night and nursed on the lace and ribbons of my pajama tops. When she died I wrapped her in a pajama top to be buried. Ting had a litter and two of them stayed with us. Sammy, for Sambo, and Patricia Louise, called Patty Lou. All three of these cats died young as did Big Daddy, a beautiful yellow and white tom who was the father of Ting's kittens.

There is a mystery in my mind about Big Daddy and no way to ever solve it. My father worked security for a train company in Dallas and late one night he found a tiny kitten, whose bloated belly told of malnutrition and who was covered with fleas and creosote and oil from the train yard. Of course my Daddy brought him home and against all expectations he survived. He was yellow and white and I always in my memory thought that he grew up to be Big Daddy, but Ting came to us at least three years after that and I distinctly remember a picture of Ting and a half grown kitten; she was licking his head, and knowing that that kitten was Big Daddy. So the railyard kitten would have been too old to be that kitten in the picture, but I have absolutely no memory of what happened to the railyard kitten, nor of where the real Big Daddy came from. There is just a gap there and everyone I could have asked who might have remembered is dead, so I'll never know.

There were the two birds, Chico and Chiquita. And a list of cats, Sampson and Chuchie and Mai Ling and Ming Foo, and after I grew up and had my own, another Moseby and two Dinos and Rebecca Jane, called Becky Jane. Wally (his name was really Apollo) and Faustus because he was black and white, but he was called Foo Foo, and Rising Star and Cecilia Poops and Molly and Tommy Gordo and Remainder and Tiggy and Sojourner Snake and the Prissy Bitch and Rikki. Of course there were dogs and two were called Chuck and Lucy.

I remember the night Lucy wandered into our yard and started living with us. Jamie and Valerie and I discussed what to name her. Jamie wanted Misty because she was gray and Valerie wanted Lucy and I wanted Dolly because she was small and had bright eyes. We put all three names on pieces of paper and drew one and Lucy she was. There was Simms and then Joe Cocker and of course the eternally charming Spock; followed by Eugen, named for the Prinz Eugen, and Cindy Lou, called Loudie, who live with me now. Cindy Lou was named for Cindy Lou Who because she was innocent and loving and playful and trusting despite the horrible treatment she had received from people before she was rescued.

Of all my old animals only Sojourner Snake is left, but also here now with Eugen and Loudie and him are my Pretty Little Thing and Brother, who started this blog, and Squeeker Marie Dupree. (I wanted her middle name to be Diane when she decided she wanted a middle name, but she insisted on Marie.)

There were also transient cats who stayed around like God's Cat, there were two of them, called so because they belonged only to the cosmos, and the Ghost Cat, (not the real ghost cat, but one called that because of his color.) and of course the Big Head Cat and Yellow Cat. I'm sure I might have forgotten some animals who gifted us with their presence for a little while and some who stayed so briefly they were not named, but these give you some idea and the names of some of the animals I have known and the reasons for some of the names.

Share here the names of your animals and how they got them. We'd all be interested in adding them to our memories. In my memory I see them all and if there were time travel I would go back to one day with each of them just to rub them again and say "I love you".

I am very lucky because I have creatures living above my ceiling. In fact, in the last three places I have lived I have had such upstairs neighbors. I see wild creatures outside because I feed them, the 'possums and raccoons and squirrels, the rats, the mice, (I'm sure none of the ceiling folk are birds, much too heavy.) but I never know which of the ones I see outside also live inside with me, there, heard, but unseen.

In the little gray house I lived in a few years ago I think there were several species in different parts. Over the bedroom I would hear quick light feet, scampering, and sometimes squeeks. I think those were squirrels, because they sounded too heavy to be mice, and anyway, usually the mice came into the house where I had to catch them, and other than that they stayed out in the storage building next to the house, but over the kitchen and bathroom there were heavier, lumbering creatures, who sometimes sounded like they were throwing each other around in some sort of olympic style activities, but not being very vocal. I think that these were raccoons.

In the place I lived before this one I only heard the squirrel sounds. I guess because of the woods out back the larger creatures had plenty of places to hide and hole up. But in the place I live now I haven't heard any until the last month.

Where I live it is summer about 9 months of the year. Three of those months have temperatures of 80 or above and six of them have temperature of 90 or above and for the other three the temperatures are usually below 80 and into the 50s and 60s at night, but for about 12 days, scattered through the 3 months we jocularly call winter, it gets cold, at least to us, and stays in the 40s or 50s during the days and may drop into the 30s at night with a few nights below freezing. (For you celsius people I am talking farenheit here.)

And, over the last month we have had a few cold nights and some creatures who normally would stay outside have apparently come in for the warmth. And these are big. If I didn't know better I would think it was a pack of dogs. And they are loud, with very long claws. I hear constant scratching of claws, almost like they're digging into the wood above, and crashes, as if they are leaping from board to board, and then rumbles, as if they were wrestling and rolling over and over with each other. It is like a symphony of wild sounds and drives Little Brother and my Pretty Thing distracted because they can hear, but not see. They both sit on the dining room table and stare at the ceiling, hoping for a hole to open and whatever is up there to tumble through. Cats can't stand a mystery.

I am reminded of the film "The Lodger", which I think was early Hitchcock, when the people below hear the man above pacing and pacing in his room and they just sit there and stare up at the ceiling. In a very effective sequence as they stare up, the ceiling is glass and you can see them staring up and also see him pacing from below. I would love it if I had a glass ceiling so I could watch them do whatever they are doing.

At any rate these are harmless creatures, (As I remember it The Lodger was Jack the Ripper.) and they are only seeking shelter, in an environment where we have destroyed so much of their natural cover. But tonight and for the next two nights we are being visited by a much heralded arctic cold front and sleet, etc. is predicted. As you can imagine in a place like this there is much anticipation and news coverage of what might happen. There was even a feature story about wild creatures, maybe even, heaven forbid, rats, seeking shelter in homes and interviews with exterminators doing impromptu ads for homeowners to call them immediately to seal up holes and/or exterminate the intruders. Isn't that just like humans? We destroy their habitats and then begrudge them shelter, and the warmth that leaks from the spaces where we stay.

I would rather lie in the sleet with my hands and body cold to the point of pain, but with my heart warm with the knowledge that I have harmed nothing, than sleep in a warm bed, begrudging survival to something doing the same thing I do everyday, trying to stay alive; because if I did that then my heart would be so cold that I would be dead, even if still walking around.

Scatter some bread or set out some leftovers tonight for something you may never see, but who will thank you, all the same.

I feed any creature I come across, except people, as those of you who read this blog know. Tonight I was feeding the birds. I get many, many pigeons, and a lot of what I call rooks, but which people around here call grackles, and some sparrows, and a new kind that I haven't seen before; perhaps sojourners from colder climes. I will have to try to look them up and see if I can find out what they are.

Anyway, a young man I know, but don't much like, was observing this and said, "People call pigeons flying rats for a reason." I told him that since I didn't see anything wrong with rats I didn't think that was derogatory and that he shouldn't repeat what stupid people lacking in compassion and spirituality said.

Of course, he trotted out the old, "rats carry diseases" statement as if it were original or meaningful and I pointed out to him that people carry and transmit more diseases than rats do, and have some rather unattractive behaviors, like waging war and genocide and child abuse and murder, etc. etc. not to mention polluting and destroying, that I am unaware of rats committing; therefore I would vote for the rat and the pigeon as more valuable and less destructive than humans.

So many selfish and unenlightened and unintelligent people are so smug in their accidental and erroneous superiority in being born human and never bother to question the validity of their assumptions that I despair of the human race, most of whom have never had an original thought in their lives. If they did no damage to things more valuable than themselves I would not be bothered by them. Unfortunately they do continuous and massive damage and they keep reproducing and perpetuating the error of their existence.

You know, on the crime shows on TV that document searches for serial killers they frequently make the point that although the reason a particular one has for the crimes may be obscure and even incomprehensible to the rest of us there is a reason and a pattern to be discerned. (I think the reason serial killers kill is simple. They like to.) But assuming there is some motivating factor, then if I ever become a serial killer ridding the world of these kinds of people would be my motivating factor.

So when this person said that to me I looked at him and I thought, "I'm making a list."

I get many of my stories about animals from my children, or other people, and here is a short one from my older boy, The SWAT cop. They were raiding another house, guarded by another Pit Bull, but this one was a little more threatening than the fleeing, felon dog.

After they had broken in the Pit Bull ran out of the house and across the yard and jumped into their SWAT van with all its equipment, etc. I may say here that SWAT cops and cops in general take a lot for granted. When they are out and about they seem to assume that the citizenary will respect their belongings from fear, or support, or whatever and they exit their vehicles, vans or cars, or whatever, leaving doors standing open or the engine running and the keys in it, etc. with never a thought to anything being taken or the vehicle stolen and usually nothing happens; although last year a woman locked in the backseat did somehow make it to the front seat and drove off in the police car which had been left running.

Anyway, they watched in amazement as the dog leaped in their van and took a very large leak all over the inside of it and then laid down and proceeded to guard it with more vigor than had been apparent in guarding its owner's house. I think that he had decided that since he couldn't keep them out of the house he would show his contempt in the only way he could. When they approached the doors the dog would growl and show its teeth and if they came too close it would stand and become more menacing, so they retreated.

Eventually the owner or some other family member was brought out and called the dog who went to them and the dog was taken back into the house and the SWAT cops boarded their van, which reeked of dog urine and was very damp in spots, for the return to the station. In this case the dog had demonstrated that there can be things worse than bark or bite.

Cats are fairly self sufficient, self reliant, creatures, but most do enjoy some companionship and interaction with others and the people with whom they live. Some I have known however stand out as more self reliant and self contained than others.

When I was a little girl and we visited relatives in the piney woods we would always go to a little settlement outside the town called Gum Springs where my greataunt Nettie lived. I remember being told that when he was a little boy my father spent as much time at her house as he did at home. She was very elderly and bedridden. As a child you just accept people and the titles given them, but as an adult, I wonder. Who was Greataunt Nettie? No one ever told me, assuming I knew, or didn't care, and then I didn't. Was she my greataunt, or my father's? If my father's then she was his father's or mother's aunt, but I don't think she was that much older, and for some reason I think she was related on his paternal side, so maybe she was his father's sister. I remember being told that she came to Texas in a wagon, and crossed the Red River on a flat barge, not by rail like some of the relatives, but since my mother and father still rode in wagons in their childhoods that doesn't mean anything, or fix her age or generation in the family.

Her last name was the same as my father's cousin Bud, so I briefly wondered if she was his mother, although maybe she was older than that and was his grandmother. I don't know. I remember going to her funeral, but I don't remember seeing Bud or his family there, which surely they were, so that doesn't mean anything, because I also don't remember the after funeral meal which always happens at some relative's house and that I'm sure we went to.

Anyway, in Gum Springs around my Greataunt Nettie's house were many feral cats, which a neighbor fed. She had a little wooden trough out front that her son had built, maybe six inches high, about three inches off the ground, and several feet long and she put scraps and other things in it and the cats came and ate. It does my heart good to remember this Kindred Spirit, although I don't think I ever even knew her name. On one visit my sisters saw some kittens and decided to get one, although my father told them "no", they knew they could ignore that. Well, they chased one little pale yellow longhaired kitten through yards and under houses and finally up a tree that my older sister Kathleen climbed to get her. Kathleen had on a bright red coat with really big, deep pockets in the front and she put the kitten in the pocket, where from being tired or frightened or cold or all three, she settled down and went to sleep.

When my father discovered this he told my sisters to ask the neighbor lady if she minded if we took the kitten, since she fed them, and of course, she didn't. She was just glad the kitten was going to a good home. My Daddy was still in the navy then and so the kitten, named Miss Fluff, went with us to Norfolk. In fact, Miss Fluff lived with us for about 13 years and made many trips back and forth across country. She could not abide being in the house and wherever we lived she was always out, although she would come when called. She insisted on eating outside and if brought in for any reason she would pace around the door until it was opened and she was free again.

The last place she lived with us was an old house in San Antonio, which had an old fence. The fence was posts with a flat board nailed on top to connect them and chicken wire stuff fastened to the board to make it a fence. In the summer the fence was covered with very leafy vines and Miss Fluff would lay under them to sleep on the board and we couldn't even see her, but one winter, when the leaves were gone and only the naked vines remained we looked out the kitchen window and saw Miss Fluff curled in a doughnut, the way cats do, on top of the board with only the bare vines for shelter. It was very, very cold and windy and we could see Miss Fluff's long hair being blown by the wind and there was a little sleet. My mother said she could not stand to see her sleeping in the cold like that and went out and got her and brought her into the warm house, but Miss Fluff paced and paced and would not settle down and so we were forced to let her back out and when we went to bed she was back on the fence, where she chose to be.

I remember other things about Miss Fluff. My sister worked at the library downtown and rode the bus home late and my mother would always walk down the block when the bus was due to meet her and walk home with her. Miss Fluff would appear when my mother set out and would follow her to the bus stop and wait and then follow them both back home, as if she were a dog.

The house had a big front porch, as only old houses do, and Miss Fluff would lay on the front porch and watch the world go by and get really irritated if any dogs came into her front yard. Usually they didn't see her and would just be sniffing and exploring as dogs do, but when they got by the front porch and she was on the rail above them she would drop down onto their backs with all her claws and and hang on. More than once we ran out when we heard a dog yipping and there would be the dog tearing out of the yard with Miss Fluff on his back, like a witch on a broomstick, or a jockey at the Kentucky Derby, her long yellow hair flying behind her. As soon as the dog left the yard she would drop off and get back on the front porch. Occasionally a dog would surprise her, but not often, and when that happened she would tear down the side of the house and over the fence, where she would stop and sit and look smugly back at the stranger dog while our dogs barked and lunged at the stranger on the other side of the fence. She stayed with us from choice and I guess because she loved us, a little, but she was always the wild kitten from Gum Springs and didn't like to share her space with anyone.

Once when I was at work in Waco for some reason a back door was propped open and a young white cat with blue eyes wandered in. She was not deaf, as blue eyed white cats supposedly are, but she was very skinny, so I begged food for her from some people who had brought their lunch and gave her some tuna fish sandwich. At the end of the day she was still there and I took her home and called her Rising Star. She never stayed in any house where we lived, but was always out, and although she came when I called she never sought me out, or seemed to need us, really. Frequently she would leave leftovers from meals she had caught on the front porch, for later snacks or for me, I never knew. She always had two white kittens in her litters, who made their own ways and were even more wild than she, so that I seldom knew them. Once, when I moved I kept her in to have her kittens for a long time and she didn't like that, and when the kittens were old enough to eat and I let her out again she left, and never returned to me. She was a cat who preferred her own world to any that she shared with humans.

Her last two kitten litter stayed with me and her daughter, called Molly by my son, was the most recent solitary cat that I knew. Molly preferred to be out, although she would come in, and in cold weather would sleep at the foot of my bed. She liked high places and would sit on top of fences and on top of whatever house we lived in. She, like Miss Fluff, would always come when I called and did like to be rubbed. She loved cream and whenever I went into the kitchen she would follow and meow for cream. Two other cats who lived with me then also loved cream and when they heard her demanding it they would run in the kitchen to get some, too. After Molly was gone, when the other two wanted cream the other female, Poopie, Miss Poops, would have to come into the kitchen and meow for it, and the tom, Ricki, would hear her and run in for some, also. Most toms do not like cream, but he loved it. When Miss Poops died and Ricki wanted cream he had to meow for it himself, which he did. It made me sad to remember when the three of them would crowd in for cream, demanded by Miss Molly.

But, like solitary cats there are solitary people and I am one. Most of the people I have known for years are very social and do things together and go out to lunch and invite me and sometimes I go, but I don't really like to. I like keeping up with my children and what's going on, but like Miss Fluff and Molly I would rather not be bothered and I prefer my own space and my own fence, or rooftop.