Once, years ago, my last exhusband married his third, soon to be ex, wife. They lived out in the country and my son really liked her and spent a lot of time out there. With her she brought her son, who was younger than mine, and a little dog and a cat.

The marriage being doomed to failure for many reasons, after a few months she took her son and left, but abandoned the little dog and the cat, with a man who would not take care of them. Whenever I leave anyone I take all animals, as well as all children. My son was upset and said to me, "We have to go get them. They will die out there."

I thought of the dog we already had, and the four cats who already lived with us, and said, "Oh, Mikey, how can we have more?" But of course we could, so we drove to the country and picked up the little dog and the cat. The original plan was that we would keep them until Roseanne, the vanishing wife, got settled, but somehow she never did and after six months I told her that they were now our animals.

I had taken them to the vet's for shots and neutering and such and it was discovered that the little dog had heartworm, for which he was treated, and he was such a joyful fellow, but that is another story. The cat, with whom his previous humans had had such little contact they had thought him female, was a tom I called Sojourner, because he was just supposed to be with us a little while.

When we went to pick them up the little dog was hiding under the house, because the big dogs were mean to him and he was afraid. He ran to meet us, but the cat was nowhere to be seen, out there in the country surrounded by woods. I started the call for cats, the high pitched carrying, "kitty, kitty, kitty" repeated over and over. This call carries so well that dogs bark, far, far away when they hear it. My son said, "he won't come for that. No one's ever called him like that. He won't know what it is."

He had barely finished speaking when we heard a cat calling, faint, but getting closer, and down a path into the woods came a black and white cat, crying out every step, "wait! wait! I'm coming!" He still talks to me, when he comes, when I call. I turned to my son and said, "they all come when mommy calls."

We put the cat and the dog in the car and took them home. Sojourner and the dog were very close, being of a size, and played together then, because there was a time when the other was the only companionship they each had. But the dog soon identified with our other dog and Sojourner got older and they didn't play anymore, or chase each other up and down the stairs of the townhouse we lived in.

After the initial shock the other cats accepted Sojourner and there were no pitched battles, but there was no friendship either, and he was pretty much an aloof cat, only interacting with the humans he lived with, depending on us, and trusting us, but I didn't feel, ever really loving us. Perhaps his earlier life had not nurtured the ability to do that.

Some months passed and it was February and a cold night, with sleet falling, about one in the morning. We were upstairs and snug, my son in his room watching TV, with the little dog under the covers of his bed, and I was in my room reading. He went downstairs for a drink and a snack, but soon came up to my room. He stood in the doorway and said, "Mama, there was a kitten outside. I heard her crying. She's cold and wet and has some sort of wound on her neck."

I said, "Oh, Michael. There are two dogs and five cats here already." But what can one do, when a cat finds one? I said, eventually, "bring her in and give her something to eat." and Michael, who knows me and is like me, said, "Oh, I already did. I put her in the downstairs bathroom with towels to sleep on and food and water."

I went to sleep and had forgotten about the kitten until I went down to make coffee the next morning and saw the other cats, but not Sojourner, who never joined the other cats, glaring at the bathroom door in the hallway. A little gray paw was coming under the door, pulling at the carpet. I put on the coffee and fed the other cats and opened the bathroom door and the little dynamo that had entered our lives from the storm of the night before streaked out. I almost died. The wound Mike had mentioned the night before was an expanse of raw flesh that covered the whole back of her neck; from the base of the skull to her shoulder blades was exposed flesh, as if someone had glued a piece of steak to her. I have never seen such a wound on an animal.

The vet to whom I took her opined that in the cold she had crawled next to an exhaust or engine of a car that was hot and had burned herself. I don't know. She would have had to have stayed in contact a long time to do that damage I thought, but he treated her for the burn, with creams and shots, but as time passed, it itched and she wouldn't leave it alone, always scratching and reopening it. He tried steroid shots, but she still would interrupt the healing process with her sharp claws, constantly digging. I bought an Ace elastic bandage and cut it in strips as long as needed to go around her neck. I pinned it in place to cover the wound and for the next two months or so she wore this turtle neck. She would still dig and pull threads loose in the bandage, but the bandage covered the wound and allowed it to heal. About once a week I would change it for a new one, the old one hanging in shreds of loose threads where her claws had done their work. Little by little the raw flesh closed over and soon pink, healed skin replaced it. I didn't think fur would ever grow back there, because the wound had been so deep I thought the hair follicles would have been destroyed, but the fur did grow back.

I had called her Chiquita, for little girl, but that didn't last long. She was half grown when she came to us, and maybe she was a little girl, but she was more an electric spark, who constantly shocked and upset the other cats. It was her house from the moment she dashed out of the bathroom and she just allowed the others to live there. She was imperious and self sufficient and the other cats found her sometimes prissy and sometimes bitchy and they all called her The Prissy Bitch and that's how she got her name. She liked it.

Unless they got in her way she ignored the other cats and since they were older and had seen cats come before they ignored her mostly, but she didn't ignore Sojourner. Could she tell he was the newest addition, after her? Did she like that he stayed by himself and was not part of the older gang? Was it that he was closer to her in age than the others? Or, like seeing a stranger across a crowded room, did she just love him?

And him, who I seldom called Sojourner now, what did he see in her? He had a habit a freezing when something unexpected occurred or appeared, and of stretching his neck out and waving his head from side to side, like a snake for a snake charmer, and I had started calling him the Snake. So the aloof, staid, neutered tom and the prickly, constantly moving spayed female Prissy Bitch loved each other. He allowed no other cat to get close to him, but at night the Prissy Bitch would curl around him on the bed and snuggled together they would sleep. Sometimes I would watch them and he would have one arm over her, pulling her close. He washed her and would lick her wound when it itched her, and she, who would have a lightening paw for any other animal who approached too close would raise her neck and expose her throat to him. They would eat from the same bowl, not because they had to, but because they were that close. They preferred each other's company more than the company of any other creature they lived with.

So, the years passed, and when we moved they all moved with us. We lived in a house with a field behind, even though we were in the town, and the Prissy Bitch was a skillful hunter. I left my bedroom window always open and the cats came and went through it. Sometimes I would wake in the dawning and the Prissy Bitch and the Snake would be curled together on the bed with an offering from the Prissy Bitch at the foot of the bed. But it wasn't just that they slept together. He wasn't and isn't a hunter, perhaps because that was the only way he ever ate his first year. Not for him the joy of stalking and pouncing, so when she was off in the field he mostly stayed in the yard, laying on the patio in the sun, or exploring the bushes and the trees, but when she came back, tired from the hunt, or stayed because it was too hot to hunt, they would sit or lay, side by side, in the sun or in the shade, and just be together. When it was bad weather and she chose not to go outside she would constantly pace from room to room, restless to be gone, and he would lay and watch her, until she tired out and would come and lay by him.

I sometimes saw the Prissy Bitch in the yard of some people across and a little down the street, which was unusual because she was usually in the field. It was often enough that I wondered if they were feeding her and thought her a stray, like the people who fed Chuchie. The Prissy Bitch was a free cat and I did not feel threatened if she had others she saw, too. She was a beautiful cat. She looked Siamese and had blue point markings, but her face was round, not long like a siamese, and her legs had stripes, and here and there were the faintest yellow patches, too pale to stand out except in light. My sister called her a pastel calico, since calico means three shades, but usually darker and more defined, but she did have three shades, and really more, like a patchwork of faint color. The Prissy Bitch also loved my son. Perhaps she remembered his warm hands carrying her to safety the night she was so lost and cold and hungry and hurt. I have pictures of him asleep and her curled on the pillow by his head, with her head tucked under his chin. She never slept with another creature like that, except the Snake.

One night when I called the cats to supper the Prissy Bitch did not come, nor for breakfast, nor ever again. I never again woke up to find her curled around the Snake on the pillow by my head. I drove the streets, looking for her body, and looked in the field, but I never found the Prissy Bitch. The people at whose house she had stayed moved while I was looking and I comfort myself with the thought that they took her, not knowing she had another, older, home. But I don't know, and although many years have passed, and I have lived many places, sometimes at night, when I call in the cats who live here now, I gaze out at the dark and wonder, where went my Prissy Bitch?

And the Snake, who loved her so, what did he think? Before she disappeared he seldom left the yard of the place we lived, not being a wanderer, after the forced wandering of his childhood. But in the years since he will wander far off, never hunting, just exploring and observing, being gone much longer than he ever was in his youth. Does he look for her, or has he forgotten, and is he just looking for a feeling he once had? I don't know. He is still a lonely, aloof cat and has never loved another thing, the way that he loved her.

All the creatures who lived together during the time of the Prissy Bitch are gone now, only me and the Snake are left, with new creatures, who never knew her. My son of course has grown up since the night he brought in the cold and hurt kitten and now lives far away from us and when cold winds blow and sleet falls only Sojourner and I remember and hope she found safe harbor. There is another little cat here now, also saved by my son. I have written about her before, the Thinger, and she has some of the personality traits of the Prissy Bitch, but lacks her warmth and loving qualities. She also has nothing to do with the others, in fact, most of the cats who live here do not seek each other out. On cold nights though, on occasion, not many, but a few, when Sojourner Snake is sleeping on a blanket at the foot of the bed, softly, softly, Thinger will creep up to him and curl and lay, with her back against his, and sleep there with him, like that. He never turns to her, or licks her, or puts his arm around her to cuddle in sleep, and I don't think she would let him if he tried, but he doesn't want to. He would spit and hit any other cat who tried to sleep touching him and he would jump up and leave, but he does let her stay and sleep, and perhaps for one moment, in sleep, he can dream that the Prissy Bitch has come back through the window, from the night.