No Cat in the Window

I'm a creature of habit. Get up at the same time every day. Leave for work at the same time. Get home around the same time. Eat dinner. Watch TV. Go to "bed" (which, for me, still means sleeping on Mom's living room couch). Get up again at the same time the next morning.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Part of my morning and evening routines involved putting out food for Petunia, the cat who lived on our back porch until she was run over by a car this past weekend.

Now I get up, put down food for the cats and look out the back window into the yard.

No cat's face staring back through the window. No paws knocking on the window, asking for attention. No movement in the yard at all.

There's still movement in the house, though. Mimi, Bumpy and Cocoa all still circle me like little furry sharks, all wanting to be petted and fed.

Not Moose, though. He stays in his current hidey-hole, in front of the living room heat vent, and doesn't show any interest.

For the past few nights, I've brought the food to him, putting out some Friskies Shreds (lots of liquid in those tins) on a small plastic lid. He'd come out, nibble on the food for a few minutes (mostly licking up the gravy) and then head on back in front of the vent. And when I went to bed, he'd come up and lie on my chest for a while until I needed to roll over and set him gently down on the floor.

Last night, though, he didn't come up to me. He stayed in his hidey hole near the vent. And this morning, I couldn't coax him to eat even a bite of the plate of food I put down for him.

I fear his time is coming soon.

Petunia

She was never a formal member of the Moore Family Kitty Clan, but Petunia hung out in Mom's yard for the past three or four years, chasing down rats and squirrels and coming up to the back window and knocking to let us know that she was there and hungry. I'd pop open a tin of Friskies, peel off 3/4 of the can for the indoor beasties, and drop the remaining 1/4 out on the porch for her.

Petunia never let me get close enough to pet her and hissed at me more often than not, but in time we developed an understanding: I put down the food and closed the back gate, and she would come out from her hidey-hole on the porch and eat whatever I'd put down.

When she didn't appear at the back window Friday or Saturday, I just chalked it up to her venturing to her other benefactors in the neighborhood. Or maybe she'd gotten herself locked up somewhere; that had happened once years ago right around Thanksgiving, and when she appeared it was like a holiday miracle.

There would be no miracle this time, though. On my way to the corner store yesterday, I found Petunia lying by the curb just up the block from our house. She'd obviously tried crossing our street--which, though not a main artery, is still fairly busy at all times of the day and night--and had not made it.

I went upstairs and told my brother, who sighed heavily, went outside and moved Petunia away from the curb to keep a car from parking on her. (I'd seen that happen to a cat once before--a horrible sight.) It was the first time he'd actually touched Petunia; he said her fur was very soft.

It's a lousy way for a cat--or any animal, domestic or not--to die, and Petunia certainly deserved better. But the life of a cat on the streets of a big city is difficult. If we could have convinced her to come in to our house, we would have; we tried more than once. It had become part of my routine to feed her as soon as I got up in the morning and when I got in from work in the evening. I hoped that she knew I cared.

But that's all over now. She's dead. And I already miss her.