To My Fallen Feline

In today's world of turmoil and hardships, forgive me in advance for sharing a trivial little story.  But a tragic event happened to me today.  

My cat died!

She wasn’t really MY cat, but she seemed to favor my house over the others, maybe because of my pleasant disposition toward animals, or maybe because I fed her well (far more likely!).

The little subdivision I live in of 20 houses doesn’t allow dogs, for which I’m grateful.  I love dogs, but dogs in the Philippines are allowed to roam freely and they multiply faster than rabbits.  In my neighborhood, stray cats have filled the void.  Of course, cats aren’t much better at limiting their reproduction, but at least they don’t make as much noise and leave as much of a mess as dogs.

The house I rent had been vacant for several months before I moved in.  A stray mother cat had already chosen a spot at the back of the house to raise her litter.  The little rats (kittens) looked so cute.  Before they knew enough to be afraid, I took one of them inside the house one day to wipe off some dirt that it had gotten into.  Turns out, this is the one that became “my” cat.

As she grew, she never let me touch her.  She’d hiss at me if I got too close.  But I’ve been hissed at plenty of times before, so I didn’t take it personally.  Still, she seemed to ‘enjoy’ hanging around my house, so I began to feed her little scraps of food, sometimes coaxing her to come inside the kitchen while she ate.  Us empty-nesters can get desperate for company.

Before her first birthday, she became pregnant, without my permission of course.  Her place of choice to give birth was on a shelf just outside the kitchen door.  Smart cat.  She deposited her litter on top of a box of books that I should have wrapped in plastic.  Those kittens grew and eventually scattered.  From then on, it seemed my promiscuous pet stayed perpetually pregnant.  By November she had her third litter of kittens and, just after Christmas day, they scattered.

A couple of days ago I saw her sleeping on top of the shelf.  She didn’t jump down like she normally would, and park herself outside the kitchen door waiting patiently for her reward.  Now her breathing was labored.  I would sometimes see her and the other cats eating thrown out food from nearby houses, so I suspect someone threw out spoiled food that wasn’t intended for cats to eat.  When I went out this morning, she had expired.

I didn’t weep over her like I wept over my first dog Diamond who died when I was 7 years old.  I didn’t give her a decent burial or even write a poem about her.  I certainly didn’t pray for her.  Gosh, I never even gave her a name.  But in our world of depravity and chaos, these little side events make interesting stories.  Next entry, back to more serious matters.