Memories of Szara
The way she'd always scratch around her food dish, and every bit of food that she ate, before and after she ate it. I found some very bizarre things in the dish when she was done with it.
She loved to eat bananas, the only cat I ever knew who would see one and come running for a taste.
She'd try to climb underneath things; she liked to snuggle close under blankets, inside sweaters, and so on. But only on her terms.
The way she'd sit straight up and LOOK at you, and move from one paw to the other once she'd got your attention, then look away like she didn't care...
Her backwards-wired ears, looking in the opposite direction of a sound and never being able to figure it out right away.
How she cringed at the mere sight of the spray bottle...but often keep on doing whatever I didn't want her to anyway.
The way she would just stare at you, begging to be petted, which btw, meant that YOU had to get on the floor instead of her climbing in our laps.
The annoying begging meewww.
Knocking things over then looking at you to make sure you saw it.
When she was awakened, how she'd pop her head up with a questioning little trill, and that tousled look she had before she stretched and smoothed herself out.
Her nose-smells. (I'll really miss those. It was so unique to her. For future reference: In greeting, when I brought my face close to her, if she felt like it, she'd stick her nose into my nostril and sniff. Ick? Sure, but I loved it.)
The way she'd walk right along with me, or slightly behind or ahead, and come back from time to time to be petted.
When playing with cat toys, she'd never jump in the air; it seemed to be too "undignified." The most she'd do was stand on her hind legs and prop her front ones against something to reach as high as possible.
She never did care for catnip.
She loved chewing on long narrow things (pens, pencils, etc.) when she had the opportunity. I mentioned to my mother once that Szara couldn't resist long narrow things, and she said nonchalantly, "Oh, I guess the spaying didn't take then?"
If there was a toy that she just looooved, she'd carry it everywhere with her. One in particular was her favourite from the time she first played with it throughout her whole life: a coil of wire with a bit of fur on one end, a toy mouse on the other, and a handle in the middle. The only time I ever heard her growl at someone was when they were trying to pull that toy away from her.
How she was always gentle, no matter what; she never got pissed enough to swat or bite, and claw-related injuries were pretty much limited to kneading or anti-slipping that got out of hand due to lack of claw-clipping.
How she'd look in your direction when you came into a room (if she was awake), and if she felt like it, she'd come over to you happily.
She'd poke her nose in the shower just to see what was going on.
Licking Mode. 'Nuff said.
When she'd climb in the bathtub and attack the shower curtain, waging war on the strip of plastic.
Her very unique smell, kinda musty.
When she got defensive and her fur puffed up, she looked like a razorback cat; that fur on her spine stuck up the most. Her tail took the longest to un-puff, and sometimes she'd completely forget about it ~ more than a time or two I'd hear her scamper in, and find her at the food dish with a puffy tail, chomping away merrily.
Her love of rubber, particularly rubber bands but also rubber gloves and balloons.
When she jumped up onto something, she was so light and graceful; often her hind legs would land before her front ones did.
When she jumped down, she'd make a little "mmr" sound, almost like a grunt.
That time she came to the doctor's with me, and fell asleep on my shoulder during the exam.
Bringing her along to the lawyer's office when I'd drop stuff off for mom, and watching this huge, serious guy being very amused and trying to find things on his desk for her to play with.
How much she loved worms. She'd sometimes go out after a rainfall because she knew there'd be tons of them.
When she'd sit on top of the washing machine waiting for the water to pour out of the hose into the laundry sink. She'd often sit IN the sink, looking up the hose, and a time or two we'd go through the laundry room to find her sitting on top of the washing machine, soaking wet, because she didn't get out of the way fast enough ~ but more interested in watching the water than in drying herself off.
The very first time she jumped up onto the kitchen table, she spent about five minutes preparing herself, wiggling that little butt and balancing herself...and then missed the table edge and dragged half the tablecloth onto the floor trying to climb up it. Dad and I just about busted apart laughing.
Her tiny little hiss. She'd open her mouth up wide, and you'd hear just a small sound come out of it, like a regular hiss with the volume turned almost all the way down.
How she loved to dive into paper bags, and especially couldn't resist if you tapped the bottom of one where she could see the movement.
When I took her out on her leash, she always wanted to walk along the edge of the sidewalk. If, for any reason, she needed to to cross to the other side of the sidewalk, it would be a slinking dash.
When she'd scratch at the covers to get in bed with me while I read, and curl up under my knees, purring.
How she'd sit on the edge of the tub when I took a bath, and play with the water.
Every time she caught a bug and ate it, she thought I'd be able to give her more. She'd look at me expectantly, like, "Come on Mom, I know you've got more somewhere..."
When I smoked, she'd want to smell the tip of my cigarettes. When I stopped for awhile, and then lit one up again, she'd be particularly interested in coming close.
The chewing sound she made when she cleaned herself.
How she'd clean each of her toes, and would get so into it she was practically trying to pull her nails out with her teeth.
The way she and Dante would curl up together, and when I opened the door, they'd both pop their heads up and move away from each other as if they were doing something against the rules.
For that matter, when she and Dante curled up together and she'd start licking him. It started out innocently enough: she'd lick his head and his ears, and he'd be suspicious at first, and then get into it and relax...and eventually she just couldn't help herself, she'd lick his neck a few times and then GRAB it. He woke up fast, and chasing would ensue. (It made me think of Charlie Brown and Lucy and that danged football ~ "I PROMISE I won't do it this time. Honest. Really! ... You know I *had* to do it.")
When she was old enough to go outside, she'd always still come in to use the litterbox. She'd be out in the garden, just outside the windows, and suddenly dash in through the family room, use the litterbox, and dash back out again.
The first thing everybody noticed, without fail, was her eyes. They were so big and green, and she always had them open as wide as possible when she met someone new.
When she used the litterbox, she spent longer scratching around to cover it up than she did in it. Perhaps related to her scratching around the food dish: She didn't just scratch in the litterbox; she scratched outside of it, all the way around, and rarely actually managed to cover anything up properly.
She didn't eat food out of your hand. She'd very carefully pick it up and carry it away somewhere, usually the floor.
She hated to be held. She could handle it for about ten seconds and then wriggle like mad to get free. The only time I remember her actually being still in my arms was when I brought her along to the airport on one occasion, to pick up my sister. Szara was just in awe at all the people, and would actually stay put when I held her, until she found something of particular interest; then she'd struggle to get free and I'd put her down for a bit and let her walk on the leash. Not too many minutes later, she'd be in awe again, and it was safe to pick her up once more.
Same principle went for joining me in bed or on the couch. She joined me by choice, no two ways about it. If I were to pick her up and put her on my lap, even if she was on the way already, I wasn't allowed to have the pleasure of her company after all. This got most annoying when I was almost asleep and she was trying to decide whether she wanted to climb under the covers or not ~ I had to hold the blanket up for her while she painstakingly made the decision.
She was never afraid of vacuum cleaners or lawnmowers. She wouldn't crawl all over them and risk being killed or injured, but she didn't flee in terror the way most cats do. (Dante: "AAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH IT'S LOUD IT'S GONNA GET ME HIDE ME SAVE ME AAAAGGGHHHHH!!!!" Szara: "Hey, it's that big noisy thing again. Wonder if it'll do anything interesting. I guess I'll stick around and watch. Hope Mom doesn't make me move.")
The bottle caps. Ahhh. I was really into Clearly Canadian for awhile, and it comes in glass bottles with metal bottlecaps. Szara was crazy about them. And smart, too. Quite early on, she'd figured out that they only made noise on an uncarpeted floor...so if we put them in the hall outside the kitchen, she wouldn't even bother hitting them. She'd just pick 'em up in her mouth and put them down on the linoleum, and go nuts. Usually at night.
For a time, she'd keep all her toy mice in the bathtub.
She LOVED to meet new people and explore new places (if that hasn't been made obvious enough by now). When we lived in New West, we were about half a block away from a convalescent hospital; Szara ALWAYS wore a collar with a tag on it, which was labeled at that time with my parents' phone number. My mom got a few calls from people letting her know that Szara was in their yard, their house, or their general vicinity, but the best one by far was from the people in the reception area of the hospital...it seems the inquisitive kitty had just ambled in through the sliding glass doors and started checking the place out. Mom told them to just put her out the front door and she'd find her way home; sure enough, she was with me again before Mom even got hold of me to let me know.
She had a thing for tape, of all things. If there was a piece of it sticking out of a package, or anything like that, she'd start chewing on it and try to take it away with her. If she COULD take it away with her, she most certainly would, and be after it for ages.
When Eline (my niece) was just a couple months old, in her car seat on the kitchen table, and the rest of the family was outside on the deck, and we heard a piercing scream of what can only be described as sudden surprise (not fear) ~ I was the first to get to the doorway, and there was Szara (almost a year old at this point), on the table, poking her nose into the car seat and sniffing curiously at Eline. Even the scream of surprise hadn't chased her away.
Her yawns were contagious to me. (You know how when someone yawns, the people around them yawn too? Like that. Except this was the first CAT that'd ever done that to me.)
She sucked at staring contests, but she never seemed to care.
She couldn't sleep and purr at the same time. She'd purr as she was falling asleep, but it would start to stutter, like a dying car, then soon cut out completely.
When we were on a walk, she'd often take a breather right where she was. Sidewalk, road, whatever ~ she'd just suddenly flop down on her side, look around, flick her tail, sometimes roll over; most often she'd get into her frog position (back feet flat on the ground underneath her; front paws in front) and wait for something interesting to happen.
I never knew how she did it, but this tiny, 8-pound cat was capable of making her footsteps sound like hoofbeats, even when she wasn't running. Thump...thump...thump...thump...just her regular walking down the hall.
(Note: It's been 2 weeks now since she's been gone, and I'm still remembering things. They're trailing off, but they're there, and will continue to be added, as long as I think of them.)
She loved to climb into laundry baskets. Full, empty, even inverted. She was known to actually slide under an upside-down laundry basket and fall asleep for hours before rooting at the bottom with her nose to get out again.
Like any cat, she walked on my keyboard when I wasn't around. One time I stepped away from my office for a few minutes, and when I came back, she'd managed to open a new document in WordPerfect, and draw a horizontal line on it ~ something I didn't even know how to do. (I still have that document saved somewhere.)
She was the queen of seat-stealing. She could be totally asleep nearby, and all it took was for me to be out of sight for 2 minutes, when I came back she'd be in my chair like she'd been there all along.
She hated wind in any form, she made the funniest faces when she walked in front of a fan or got caught in a gust of wind, ducking and flattening her ears to try and get out of the way.
She didn't seem to notice (or maybe didn't care) when she got something in her whiskers ~ she'd come inside with little twigs, spiderwebs, things like that caught on them, and just go about whatever she was doing. One time, in fact, I noticed that her whiskers on one side were singed and curled; she'd gone to investigate a candle that'd been burning in the apartment, and hadn't been bothered by it at all. I wound up cutting those whiskers short and letting them grow back, and she didn't seem to notice.
When she was little, and had just recovered from being sick, I think her balance was thrown off a little bit. She'd groom herself, and inevitably would fall over in some direction or another from trying to reach a spot low on her back.
In the summer, Mom would water the hanging baskets on the porch, and Szara'd come to watch. Quite hilarious, really, she'd follow the streams of water from where they fell all the way down to the end of the deck, sometimes for a half hour or more, batting at them, trying to catch them. It was very amusing.
In the winter, the one time that it snowed really hard, I brought her outside to see it, and she shook every time a flake hit her, and tried to dodge them while also trying to look at them closer. Quite funny.
She liked to eat the apple part out of McDonald's apple pies.
When I'd just gotten her and was simultaneously moving back in to my parents' place ~ before she got sick the first time ~ she kept climbing to the highest point of my bedroom, in amongst all the piles of stuff I had all over the place. It was one constant she could count on: being the queen of everything by staying as high as she could, even if getting up there toppled the pile over.
After my mom had seen the movie "Bicentennial Man," she took to calling Szara "Little Miss." The name stuck, and I found myself calling her that without thinking.
I may have mentioned it already, but she absolutely adored rubber, and could sniff it out anywhere.
She loved paper bags, but especially those long narrow wine bags. She'd dive in headfirst, and get stuck, struggle and wiggle and crawl all over the floor, then finally get out...and go at it all over again, and again, and again, until the bag was torn to shreds.
Along with her trust in all living things came a love of people. After we'd lived in our neighbourhood for awhile, one evening I took a stroll down the block and she trotted along behind me. Towards the end of the block was a group of people having a barbecue on the front lawn. They ALL recognized the cat....and then three separate people, realizing she was mine, regaled me with tales of her entering their houses, through the front door, back door ~ and one through the bathroom window. They were all delighted, said she was a very polite guest, and always left of her own free will the same way she'd come in.
Almost a year later, and I can still think of a few....
When she got sick that first time and I had to nurse her back to health, it seemed her interests were entirely backwards: I had to practically force down the syringe-fed blended food, but she lunged for the antibiotics, drinking them down lustily. I have a picture somewhere of her standing on her hind legs, lapping the medicine from the syringe happily.
She loved to eat bananas, the only cat I ever knew who would see one and come running for a taste.
She'd try to climb underneath things; she liked to snuggle close under blankets, inside sweaters, and so on. But only on her terms.
The way she'd sit straight up and LOOK at you, and move from one paw to the other once she'd got your attention, then look away like she didn't care...
Her backwards-wired ears, looking in the opposite direction of a sound and never being able to figure it out right away.
How she cringed at the mere sight of the spray bottle...but often keep on doing whatever I didn't want her to anyway.
The way she would just stare at you, begging to be petted, which btw, meant that YOU had to get on the floor instead of her climbing in our laps.
The annoying begging meewww.
Knocking things over then looking at you to make sure you saw it.
When she was awakened, how she'd pop her head up with a questioning little trill, and that tousled look she had before she stretched and smoothed herself out.
Her nose-smells. (I'll really miss those. It was so unique to her. For future reference: In greeting, when I brought my face close to her, if she felt like it, she'd stick her nose into my nostril and sniff. Ick? Sure, but I loved it.)
The way she'd walk right along with me, or slightly behind or ahead, and come back from time to time to be petted.
When playing with cat toys, she'd never jump in the air; it seemed to be too "undignified." The most she'd do was stand on her hind legs and prop her front ones against something to reach as high as possible.
She never did care for catnip.
She loved chewing on long narrow things (pens, pencils, etc.) when she had the opportunity. I mentioned to my mother once that Szara couldn't resist long narrow things, and she said nonchalantly, "Oh, I guess the spaying didn't take then?"
If there was a toy that she just looooved, she'd carry it everywhere with her. One in particular was her favourite from the time she first played with it throughout her whole life: a coil of wire with a bit of fur on one end, a toy mouse on the other, and a handle in the middle. The only time I ever heard her growl at someone was when they were trying to pull that toy away from her.
How she was always gentle, no matter what; she never got pissed enough to swat or bite, and claw-related injuries were pretty much limited to kneading or anti-slipping that got out of hand due to lack of claw-clipping.
How she'd look in your direction when you came into a room (if she was awake), and if she felt like it, she'd come over to you happily.
She'd poke her nose in the shower just to see what was going on.
Licking Mode. 'Nuff said.
When she'd climb in the bathtub and attack the shower curtain, waging war on the strip of plastic.
Her very unique smell, kinda musty.
When she got defensive and her fur puffed up, she looked like a razorback cat; that fur on her spine stuck up the most. Her tail took the longest to un-puff, and sometimes she'd completely forget about it ~ more than a time or two I'd hear her scamper in, and find her at the food dish with a puffy tail, chomping away merrily.
Her love of rubber, particularly rubber bands but also rubber gloves and balloons.
When she jumped up onto something, she was so light and graceful; often her hind legs would land before her front ones did.
When she jumped down, she'd make a little "mmr" sound, almost like a grunt.
That time she came to the doctor's with me, and fell asleep on my shoulder during the exam.
Bringing her along to the lawyer's office when I'd drop stuff off for mom, and watching this huge, serious guy being very amused and trying to find things on his desk for her to play with.
How much she loved worms. She'd sometimes go out after a rainfall because she knew there'd be tons of them.
When she'd sit on top of the washing machine waiting for the water to pour out of the hose into the laundry sink. She'd often sit IN the sink, looking up the hose, and a time or two we'd go through the laundry room to find her sitting on top of the washing machine, soaking wet, because she didn't get out of the way fast enough ~ but more interested in watching the water than in drying herself off.
The very first time she jumped up onto the kitchen table, she spent about five minutes preparing herself, wiggling that little butt and balancing herself...and then missed the table edge and dragged half the tablecloth onto the floor trying to climb up it. Dad and I just about busted apart laughing.
Her tiny little hiss. She'd open her mouth up wide, and you'd hear just a small sound come out of it, like a regular hiss with the volume turned almost all the way down.
How she loved to dive into paper bags, and especially couldn't resist if you tapped the bottom of one where she could see the movement.
When I took her out on her leash, she always wanted to walk along the edge of the sidewalk. If, for any reason, she needed to to cross to the other side of the sidewalk, it would be a slinking dash.
When she'd scratch at the covers to get in bed with me while I read, and curl up under my knees, purring.
How she'd sit on the edge of the tub when I took a bath, and play with the water.
Every time she caught a bug and ate it, she thought I'd be able to give her more. She'd look at me expectantly, like, "Come on Mom, I know you've got more somewhere..."
When I smoked, she'd want to smell the tip of my cigarettes. When I stopped for awhile, and then lit one up again, she'd be particularly interested in coming close.
The chewing sound she made when she cleaned herself.
How she'd clean each of her toes, and would get so into it she was practically trying to pull her nails out with her teeth.
The way she and Dante would curl up together, and when I opened the door, they'd both pop their heads up and move away from each other as if they were doing something against the rules.
For that matter, when she and Dante curled up together and she'd start licking him. It started out innocently enough: she'd lick his head and his ears, and he'd be suspicious at first, and then get into it and relax...and eventually she just couldn't help herself, she'd lick his neck a few times and then GRAB it. He woke up fast, and chasing would ensue. (It made me think of Charlie Brown and Lucy and that danged football ~ "I PROMISE I won't do it this time. Honest. Really! ... You know I *had* to do it.")
When she was old enough to go outside, she'd always still come in to use the litterbox. She'd be out in the garden, just outside the windows, and suddenly dash in through the family room, use the litterbox, and dash back out again.
The first thing everybody noticed, without fail, was her eyes. They were so big and green, and she always had them open as wide as possible when she met someone new.
When she used the litterbox, she spent longer scratching around to cover it up than she did in it. Perhaps related to her scratching around the food dish: She didn't just scratch in the litterbox; she scratched outside of it, all the way around, and rarely actually managed to cover anything up properly.
She didn't eat food out of your hand. She'd very carefully pick it up and carry it away somewhere, usually the floor.
She hated to be held. She could handle it for about ten seconds and then wriggle like mad to get free. The only time I remember her actually being still in my arms was when I brought her along to the airport on one occasion, to pick up my sister. Szara was just in awe at all the people, and would actually stay put when I held her, until she found something of particular interest; then she'd struggle to get free and I'd put her down for a bit and let her walk on the leash. Not too many minutes later, she'd be in awe again, and it was safe to pick her up once more.
Same principle went for joining me in bed or on the couch. She joined me by choice, no two ways about it. If I were to pick her up and put her on my lap, even if she was on the way already, I wasn't allowed to have the pleasure of her company after all. This got most annoying when I was almost asleep and she was trying to decide whether she wanted to climb under the covers or not ~ I had to hold the blanket up for her while she painstakingly made the decision.
She was never afraid of vacuum cleaners or lawnmowers. She wouldn't crawl all over them and risk being killed or injured, but she didn't flee in terror the way most cats do. (Dante: "AAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH IT'S LOUD IT'S GONNA GET ME HIDE ME SAVE ME AAAAGGGHHHHH!!!!" Szara: "Hey, it's that big noisy thing again. Wonder if it'll do anything interesting. I guess I'll stick around and watch. Hope Mom doesn't make me move.")
The bottle caps. Ahhh. I was really into Clearly Canadian for awhile, and it comes in glass bottles with metal bottlecaps. Szara was crazy about them. And smart, too. Quite early on, she'd figured out that they only made noise on an uncarpeted floor...so if we put them in the hall outside the kitchen, she wouldn't even bother hitting them. She'd just pick 'em up in her mouth and put them down on the linoleum, and go nuts. Usually at night.
For a time, she'd keep all her toy mice in the bathtub.
She LOVED to meet new people and explore new places (if that hasn't been made obvious enough by now). When we lived in New West, we were about half a block away from a convalescent hospital; Szara ALWAYS wore a collar with a tag on it, which was labeled at that time with my parents' phone number. My mom got a few calls from people letting her know that Szara was in their yard, their house, or their general vicinity, but the best one by far was from the people in the reception area of the hospital...it seems the inquisitive kitty had just ambled in through the sliding glass doors and started checking the place out. Mom told them to just put her out the front door and she'd find her way home; sure enough, she was with me again before Mom even got hold of me to let me know.
She had a thing for tape, of all things. If there was a piece of it sticking out of a package, or anything like that, she'd start chewing on it and try to take it away with her. If she COULD take it away with her, she most certainly would, and be after it for ages.
When Eline (my niece) was just a couple months old, in her car seat on the kitchen table, and the rest of the family was outside on the deck, and we heard a piercing scream of what can only be described as sudden surprise (not fear) ~ I was the first to get to the doorway, and there was Szara (almost a year old at this point), on the table, poking her nose into the car seat and sniffing curiously at Eline. Even the scream of surprise hadn't chased her away.
Her yawns were contagious to me. (You know how when someone yawns, the people around them yawn too? Like that. Except this was the first CAT that'd ever done that to me.)
She sucked at staring contests, but she never seemed to care.
She couldn't sleep and purr at the same time. She'd purr as she was falling asleep, but it would start to stutter, like a dying car, then soon cut out completely.
When we were on a walk, she'd often take a breather right where she was. Sidewalk, road, whatever ~ she'd just suddenly flop down on her side, look around, flick her tail, sometimes roll over; most often she'd get into her frog position (back feet flat on the ground underneath her; front paws in front) and wait for something interesting to happen.
I never knew how she did it, but this tiny, 8-pound cat was capable of making her footsteps sound like hoofbeats, even when she wasn't running. Thump...thump...thump...thump...just her regular walking down the hall.
(Note: It's been 2 weeks now since she's been gone, and I'm still remembering things. They're trailing off, but they're there, and will continue to be added, as long as I think of them.)
She loved to climb into laundry baskets. Full, empty, even inverted. She was known to actually slide under an upside-down laundry basket and fall asleep for hours before rooting at the bottom with her nose to get out again.
Like any cat, she walked on my keyboard when I wasn't around. One time I stepped away from my office for a few minutes, and when I came back, she'd managed to open a new document in WordPerfect, and draw a horizontal line on it ~ something I didn't even know how to do. (I still have that document saved somewhere.)
She was the queen of seat-stealing. She could be totally asleep nearby, and all it took was for me to be out of sight for 2 minutes, when I came back she'd be in my chair like she'd been there all along.
She hated wind in any form, she made the funniest faces when she walked in front of a fan or got caught in a gust of wind, ducking and flattening her ears to try and get out of the way.
She didn't seem to notice (or maybe didn't care) when she got something in her whiskers ~ she'd come inside with little twigs, spiderwebs, things like that caught on them, and just go about whatever she was doing. One time, in fact, I noticed that her whiskers on one side were singed and curled; she'd gone to investigate a candle that'd been burning in the apartment, and hadn't been bothered by it at all. I wound up cutting those whiskers short and letting them grow back, and she didn't seem to notice.
When she was little, and had just recovered from being sick, I think her balance was thrown off a little bit. She'd groom herself, and inevitably would fall over in some direction or another from trying to reach a spot low on her back.
In the summer, Mom would water the hanging baskets on the porch, and Szara'd come to watch. Quite hilarious, really, she'd follow the streams of water from where they fell all the way down to the end of the deck, sometimes for a half hour or more, batting at them, trying to catch them. It was very amusing.
In the winter, the one time that it snowed really hard, I brought her outside to see it, and she shook every time a flake hit her, and tried to dodge them while also trying to look at them closer. Quite funny.
She liked to eat the apple part out of McDonald's apple pies.
When I'd just gotten her and was simultaneously moving back in to my parents' place ~ before she got sick the first time ~ she kept climbing to the highest point of my bedroom, in amongst all the piles of stuff I had all over the place. It was one constant she could count on: being the queen of everything by staying as high as she could, even if getting up there toppled the pile over.
After my mom had seen the movie "Bicentennial Man," she took to calling Szara "Little Miss." The name stuck, and I found myself calling her that without thinking.
I may have mentioned it already, but she absolutely adored rubber, and could sniff it out anywhere.
She loved paper bags, but especially those long narrow wine bags. She'd dive in headfirst, and get stuck, struggle and wiggle and crawl all over the floor, then finally get out...and go at it all over again, and again, and again, until the bag was torn to shreds.
Along with her trust in all living things came a love of people. After we'd lived in our neighbourhood for awhile, one evening I took a stroll down the block and she trotted along behind me. Towards the end of the block was a group of people having a barbecue on the front lawn. They ALL recognized the cat....and then three separate people, realizing she was mine, regaled me with tales of her entering their houses, through the front door, back door ~ and one through the bathroom window. They were all delighted, said she was a very polite guest, and always left of her own free will the same way she'd come in.
Almost a year later, and I can still think of a few....
When she got sick that first time and I had to nurse her back to health, it seemed her interests were entirely backwards: I had to practically force down the syringe-fed blended food, but she lunged for the antibiotics, drinking them down lustily. I have a picture somewhere of her standing on her hind legs, lapping the medicine from the syringe happily.