Cat With No Name,

Just a Number

Two, the number was two. Cat 2, I thought of her. She was the last one left of a group of three who came with the house when we moved in twelve years ago. She was a ghost at night, stalking prey in the dark. A huntress. Eventually, she was the only one of the three still around. She decided about then that the space underneath the back porch was home.

She claimed the territory around the house and garden as hers and kept it free from lizards, squirrels, rabbits and even made a skunk or two feel unwelcome enough to leave. Never saw a rat or mouse. She took care of them, too.

She disappeared last winter. We never knew how she met her end until this fall when some workers rebuilding the back porch found her underneath, curled up, gone.

I’m not a critter person and certainly not a cat person so it never occurred to me to so much as invite her inside. But I must say I miss her, especially when I see how fast and by how much the wild critter count has gone up around here. And now she has her own Substack post, complete with picture. I guess she earned that much in her short, but useful, life.