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.