Adieu, Annie.

She showed up on a one of those nights where Spring didn’t get the message that Winter had left.
It was below freezing and Bob was going to get wood.
“Amanda, there’s a cat at the back door.”
“Well, it can stay at the back door,” I shot back.
We’ve had strays around here before, mostly this big, fluffy orange fellow. I can’t stand him. He’s mangy and who know where he actually lives but sometimes he shows up and finds a way into the basement and I steel my nerves against him until he leaves.
She was different.
She was pretty.
And clearly not mangy.
And skinny in an “Oh, you’ve been out on your own” sort of way.
She was a sleek black and gray tiger striped with a completely white underside and white paws. With one glimpse I felt my 11-year-old self surface, the girl who found every stray, starved cat or dog in my small town and had a speech prepared for why we had to take care of her. They were always hers. I knew I’d like this her if I just gave her a chance.
But there are three children, two adults and a dog under this roof already and I have a hard enough time keeping everything running as it is. I did not need to add cat hair and a litter box to the list.
But she found her way into the basement (old New York houses and a bad foundation in one area...) and after I’d put everyone to bed that night, I opened the basement door. Just to look at her. She shot through the door straight to the dog dish, like she’d been there before. Soft heart Bob must have let her in for a minute, I thought.
She was friendly. Almost annoyingly so. I let her eat and then she proceeded to purr like a chainsaw and rub against my legs over and over and over. I petted her, for some reason unconcerned that this stray cat would have fleas or germs. Beauty really does open doors.
I reminded myself that I didn’t have room in my life or my small house for a cat and I put her with a small bowl of dog food back into the basement. She got in, she could get out.
After scolding Bob about the cat, my guilt forced me to write him a note: “I fed the cat. How stupid am I!!! Now I feel guilty...”
He responded, in crayon of course, something about compassion and if the cat came back, we should consider keeping her.
That night, she came back. The meow at the basement door was loud and melted my heart. I opened the door and let her in.
She walked in as if she had always lived with us.
“What do you guys think of this cat?” I asked.
The kids were enthralled by the novelty. They had never really spent time with a cat and were excited by her. I sent Bob to the store for some food and cat litter and we decided to give her a try.
For about four days, she did nothing but eat and sleep. She threw up, clearly because she hadn’t been eating and food was a shock to her system. She was a model house member.
I took her to the vet for shots and to be de-wormed, because that seemed responsible. We found out she was a non-pregnant, otherwise healthy 8-10 month old cat.
Then, it was like she woke up and became the kitten she was. She started randomly racing through the house at warp speed, finding ping-pong balls or bits of string and playing with them. She started batting at little hands and feet dangling over beds. This is when the children decided they did not like the cat. Jack LOVED her until the night she attacked his sleepy, moving feet. After three nights of being thrown off my bed, she figured out if she went to the foot of Bob’s side, she had a safe sleeping perch.
Jimmy, our Springer Spaniel, is going on five years with us and was, for the first week anyway, very distressed over the cat. She scratched and hissed at him. She clearly was given better food. While he is not allowed to put so much as a paw on the furniture, she was all over the place and didn’t get in trouble.
It was after a week or so that I just didn’t think a cat was for us. I didn’t like dealing with the litter box, and we don’t really have a great location for one. She interrupted my weekly routines with her snuggling ways. I save all my favorite television for Wednesday evenings when I shove my kids in bed, kick Bob out of the room, fold laundry and drown in entertainment. She was constantly purring and jumping in my lap or onto my clean laundry. Some of Robbie’s clothes last week had to be rewashed because she used them as sleeping implements.
I decided to find her a new family and by chance, told this to a friend who stopped by. He lives down the street and as he was driving home, noticed a washed out sign nailed to a telephone pole. He stopped and called me. The sign had a picture of Annie on it, but the words had been washed away.
I was elated. She had a family to return to, all I had to do was find them. I walked the ½ a block to the sign to make sure I couldn’t make out a number and collected the sign to prove to Bob that we couldn’t keep Annie.
I designed a little ad and sent it to our little advertising shopper. They agreed to run the ad for free in the interest of returning the cat to its home. I made a sign and the kids and I took a walk before General Conference on Sunday, putting some up on various phone poles in our section of the village. I, of course, put one on the pole where I’d found the other sign.
Turns out her family lived right across the street.
Mike and Jen Hennessey, by coincidence the son and daughter-in-law of a couple I go to church with, moved to Mount Morris a couple months ago from Dansville, a village 13 miles to the south. Tigress and Panda, sister kittens named from Kung Fu Panda, were their three children’s favorite pets. Tigress was pregnant when she went missing a month and a half ago. They feared she’d tried to wander back to Dansville and they’d never see her again.
They saw some lady putting tape over their sign the day before, and today as they were leaving their house, they noticed it was actually a different sign. With a picture of their cat on it.
Mike called and asked if we were the people who’d posted a cat sign.”Oh, are you her family?” I asked.
This is the point where I have to confess to a bit of dread. Despite my actions and insistence, I had become attached to the cat. I liked her despite my objections. I was whining to my sister one night about the extra responsibilty and she simply said, “Mandy, I remember you really liking cats.” Stupid siblings know everything about everything. And I had spent the night before letting her sit on my lap while I worked on various things. I played with her when she was frisky before bedtime and I confess, I even petted her fondly.
Mike described her and said, “Does she act like she has amnesia? Like, you push her off your lap and she just jumps right back on?”
Definitely Annie.
They drove to the house. I had planned on asking for proof of ownership. Mike wanted to be sure it was their cat, too. He took her and looked at her tail. I knew then she was gone: The tip was broken and her tail is a bit crooked at the end. She was theirs.
And I found myself a bit sad as I gathered up the food we had for her to send home with them.
I gathered the kids to say goodbye.
Jack was ambivalent.
Ellie kept asking where Annie was going.
I tried not to feel like my small, crowded house was empty.
The Hennessey’s were thrilled, almost to tears.
They pondered what had happened to her babies, a thought I still can’t process. She was not lactating when she came to my door, so I know something happened before she came to me. However, I still spent part of the day brewing over whether my letting her in killed her kittens.
I keep telling myself overall, I did the right thing, from letting her in, to taking care of her, to searching for her family, to returning her.
So, why have I just written 1,500 words about a cat I didn’t want?
And why tonight do I miss her?