My boy was always a cat who marched to a different drummer.
Eighteen years ago, I found 15 feral kittens in an office center parking lot. In the evening, when I went to feed them, the kittens would line up in two rows on the top of a storm drain. There were orange kittens, and black and white kittens and a “torbie” who looked like one of my cats. Waiting for food on the storm drain cover, they looked like they were posing for a photo shoot. All except Little Gray. He was always on the sidewalk on the other side of a patch of woods, sharpening his claws on a tree trunk — a tiny gray and white kitten with gray patches covering both eyes stretched full-length scratching his favorite tree.
In those days, we didn’t do trap/neuter/return, and I couldn’t have returned the kittens anyway because Animal Control wanted them almost as badly as I did. So I spent the entire summer trapping wild kittens. Little Gray, who always wanted us to believe he was much smarter than any of us, was one of the first to go in a trap.
My daughter was away for the summer, so I gave the kittens her room. The second they heard me coming, they’d pile into her closet. After everyone was safely hidden in all the “stuff” teenagers tend to collect, Little Gray would come out to watch me do the boxes and fix the food. The braver he got, the closer he came, until he was close enough to swat my hand while I was scooping. My hands were covered with scratches, but I loved him anyway.
Most of the kittens wanted to be feral for life and went to live in barns. But Little Gray and Tabby (the torbie who looked like my Dahlia) and an orange cat named Toby stayed with me. I trapped Toby three times, and I thought any cat who would go into a trap three times needed some extra supervision and might not last long on a farm.
Over the years, Little Gray and I developed a deep friendship that might be difficult for some humans to understand. I loved him more than any cat I have ever known, and he loved me, although he thought I was really dumb, even for a human. He slept with me every night for 18 years, and talked to me with his eyes and his heart. He also bit me when he was in the mood and would stay outside for days, always where I could see him but couldn’t quite reach him. Seeing the gray patches over the eyes and the white nose poking through the ivy on a steep hill or a clump of sticker bushes always made me laugh.
Knowing him was a special gift, and I’m so fortunate that he honored me with his friendship. He enriched my life and taught me about cats in more ways than I could ever count. He would have been 19 in April.
Little Gray sleeping on the balcony
Tabby with her favorite feather toy
Toby in the toy basket
