CAT

This is a true story about a cat.
Bible Fellowship Church in Leeburn is in a very picturesque location. Surrounded by forest on every side, living there was an daily adventure. We often crossed paths with the many four-legged inhabitants of our wilderness locale. A black bear crossing the road in front of our house, a moose and her calf holding up traffic as we drove home from town, timber wolves, a cougar's scream in the night...even an ermine weasel popping up though the heating vents ....these were a part of our daily lives. But when the field mice made themselves at home in our house we decided to get a cat. One of our neighbors had several feral cats with kittens in her barn, so we brought one home. The very first night that tiny kitten caught and devoured a mouse, so we kept her. She never had a name...she was just "the cat". She came and went at will, occasionally bringing home her daily catch from the woods, dropping a mole into a boot as a gift to her benefactors. One day she was dozing in the carport and accidentally had her long fluffy tail run over by a car, causing it to become permanently paralyzed. A short time later that tail became entangled in a clump of burs and dropped off, making her look like a mini-bobcat.
One Sunday morning during the summer we were congregated as usual in the church with both front and back doors open to catch the breeze, when the people in the back row began to chuckle.
Our cat had wandered in the front door and was leisurely strolling down the isle, in no hurry at all, totally at peace with her world. The sermon halted, all eyes on the cat, as she went out the back door. These folks do adore all things "cute"...babies, animals, etc., so there's no use trying to compete with a mini bobcat.
I was amazed at the loyalty of that small cat, because we were not very attentive, even giving her away to a family with children at one point. She cried so much that they asked us to take her back. Then there was the week we went away and accidentally locked her in the house with nothing to eat but a few beef bullion cubes she found in the kitchen cupboard.When we came home she smothered us with love and affection. Stockholm Syndrome, perhaps? A year later we moved and we did find her a good home, but I often wonder if she still cries to come home to her wilderness paradise.