Yes…Julia, I guess cats do have nine lives…
by
Shannon Hollon
A few years ago on a rainy October night my family was enjoying a nice fire in the fireplace, when we were all startled by a stray black cat which jumped up in the window seal looking for a warm dry place. My kids let the poor soaking wet wretch in to warm by the fire and soon fell in love with him. He soon began to take up residence at our place and think of himself as one of the family,even gaining a name “Spook.”
Early one Sunday morning I woke and saw something black in the road in the front of the house, and to my dismay it was “Spook” mashed flat as flitter and dead. I hurried to get a shovel to bury the carcass before the kids got up. When I got back it was gone. Only a blood and gut stain on the asphalt remained. Our Sunday went as usual. When we got home from church that afternoon and walked in the basement, I heard a familiar meow and looked and it was “Spook” alive and well and wanting to be fed. My family was excited to have their cat back that they had grieved for earlier in the day. The hair stood up on the back of my neck, because I knew the injuries I saw that morning were not survivable. The closer we got to Halloween, the Autumn days got cooler and shorter and the leaves began to change to their bright oranges and yellows.
One morning I got up before dawn to go to work and again I found old “Spook” in the middle of Jefferson County road 18 smeared into a mush of fur, again I grabbed my shovel but due to time constraints I moved “Spook” out of the road to the ditch till I could get home later and give him a proper Christian burial. When I got home that afternoon Spook’s
carcass was gone and nowhere to be found. When my daughter asked about him the only explanation was “I guess cats do have nine lives”…but one thing I know for sure my kids could not have pick a better name for that orphaned black cat.
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I had a friend whose husband had several outdoor cats. She didn’t like them, but tolerated them because he loved and cared for them. One day as she backed out of her drive she ran over one of his cats. She scooped him up in a plastic grocery bag, took off across her backyard, and gave him a sling across a ditch. The bag caught high up on a limb in a dead tree, and she didn’t have time to try to get it down. She couldn’t be late for her hair appointment. When her husband asked about his missing cat, she acted like she didn’t know where it was, and even went out in the yard to help him look for it. As she neared the ditch in fear of him finding the bag in the tree, she noticed it was gone. The bag was not on the ground either. She breathed a sigh of relief, but was still confused about where it could be. A few weeks later, the cat returned, but she said it never was right.
Cute cat