Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 7, 1994 TAG: 9408080012
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-4 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By DONNA ALVIS-BANKS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Twenty-one years ago I was a sophomore at Radford College when I met my good friend, and I suspect she was an accident just waiting to happen.
I zipped home from morning classes one day (home being a creaky upstairs apartment in a large old Christiansburg house) and found her perched in a tree just outside the bathroom window. I wouldn't have noticed her there if it hadn't been for that pitiful mewing.
She was a tiny black-and-white fluff of trembling fur. Her eyes were as big as saucers. Her ribs stuck out.
It would have been easy to overlook such a little cat in such a big oak tree.
I could have shut the bathroom window ... or closed the bathroom door ... or jammed my fingers in my ears and hummed loudly.
I could have found a way to ignore her plight, but - well, I just couldn't.
So I rushed downstairs and planted myself under the oak, peering up through the red-tinged leaves. Not being a crackerjack tree climber myself, I decided to opt for the power of persuasion and try to talk her down.
"Come on, little kitty," I coaxed in my sweetest sounding baby babble. "Come on down. You've got eight more lives left, you know."
Cautiously, she inched her way toward my outstretched hand. It took her nearly an hour to get within my grasp. When I scooped her up and carried her upstairs to a bowl of cold milk, I had no idea I was rolling out the red carpet for a guest who would hang around for the next 21 years.
I named her "Spot," an inspiration from my first-grade reader.
See Spot. Spot can run. See Spot run.
In those early years, she skittered around the apartment like lightning.
She darted under the bed when I caught her sharpening her claws on the velveteen bedspread.
She soared through the air after I discovered her atop the kitchen table, sampling the Butterball turkey I had just baked for Thanksgiving dinner.
She bolted when the Christmas tree fell over in the middle of the living room.
Visiting friends were compelled to give audience to her tricks. Like a veteran circus acrobat, Spot knew how to work a crowd. For a scrap of leftover turkey, she would jump 31/2 feet into the air and wrap her paws around your wrist.
I'm amazed now at how quickly the years flew by.
I graduated from college, took a teaching job and moved out of the apartment and into a large old house of my own.
Spot went with me.
A year later, I left for the hospital and came back with a squiggling, squalling baby boy.
Spot didn't like it, but she stayed with me.
The next year, I left for the hospital again and came back with another squiggling, squalling baby boy.
Spot stuck it out.
She endured the terrible, tail-pulling two's, the humiliation of having a 3-year-old pour milk on her head, the ignominy of playing cat-and-mouse games with a 5-year-old.
I was so busy being a mom, I took Spot for granted. Occasionally, as I bustled about in the kitchen, I paused to scratch her ears or tickle her nose before I dumped her food in a bowl. Once in a great while, when children were tucked in bed and dishes were washed and laundry was folded, Spot emerged from some secret hiding place to cuddle beside me on the sofa.
More often, she curled up on my husband's hairy chest or huddled beside one of my sons in front of the heater. When it was snowing outside, she planted herself in front of the wood stove. When it was sunny outside, she found a window seat.
Sometimes early in the morning she woke me from a sound sleep with her low mewing.
She had grown old. Her movement was slow and measured. Her ribs stuck out.
During last winter's bitter ice storm, I worried that she wouldn't see the spring.
Of course, she fooled me.
She spent the spring lazing in the flower garden and sunning herself on warm asphalt in the driveway.
As the days turned warmer, she relished long days outdoors, wearily watching my sons as they bounced a basketball or jumped on the trampoline. She ditched under my van when the soccer team showed up one day for an end-of-the-season party.
Above the din of shouting boys and thumping soccer balls, I heard the voice of one of my own sons bellowing, "QUIT IT, STUPID!"
I hurried to see what was the matter and found my son standing up for Spot, admonishing a younger child for tormenting the cat with a stick.
I was proud of him.
Last month, as I was zipping out of the driveway on my way to the Little League game, I noticed Spot sitting on the lawn. She looked so pretty - a black-and-white fluff of fur on the green grass - with her tail curled primly around her paws.
I stopped the van for a second and called out to her, "Bye, Spot! See you after the game."
She watched me drive away.
When Spot didn't come home that night, I knew she wasn't coming home again.
Oh, I called for her and searched the neighborhood and checked the roadsides and phoned the humane society, but I knew in my heart that she was gone. She wasn't the type to stray.
She had gone off to die.
I'm happy that I knew her for 21 years. I'm glad I had her spayed and fed her leftover turkey and didn't turn my back when she needed me.
I'm grateful for her friendship, and I miss it.
She was a bright Spot in my life.
by CNB