We found her back in April of 1993, when she was just a kitten. We'd gone for a ride on a country road and there on the side of the road was a box with a mama cat and about 5 kittens. We put them in the car and brought them home, and when they were weaned, we took the mama and 4 other kittens to the pet shop where we knew they'd get homes.. then we kept the ugliest one, and Bonnie named her Shay.
She had a really good disposition...and she was dead on at predicting a storm...she liked to stay outside, but we always knew a storm was coming because that's when she'd dart inside and curl up by the couch. Rain storm, or snow storm, she never failed to let us know when bad weather was on the way.
She was too dignified to play kitten/cat games.. a piece of string, or ball of yarn, she looked at those things with disdain. She wouldn't play with a toy of any kind...she preferred being scratched behind her ears or under her chin to any ol' playing around. She didn't much cotton to human visitors other than those of us who lived here - when we had company, she'd make herself scarce and come back on the porch after our company left.
She wouldn't allow stray dogs to come into the yard, when we would hear a yelp, we knew she'd kicked some dog booty. The only one she would let come over to visit was a big black lab whose name escapes me now...but...she had some kittens once, and while she was nursing them, we looked out on the side porch and in her bed along side her kittens, happily nursing away with her babies, was a baby opposum. If I hadn't seen that with my own eyes, I'd not have believed it. One of the kittens she had back in the winter was hit and killed by a neighbor's car in the driveway - and we gave the other one away, so we don't have any of her babies.
Shay disappeared last week and hasn't been back since. She's never done that before in the 12 years we've had her. I'm guessing she's gone someplace and just died. :( 12 years is a long time. I miss her. Now I wish we hadn't given her "kitten from hell" away.
Posted by juel at May 19, 2005 01:57 AM