"Is that your cat?" asked the odd jobs man, looking down the road from his truck. I was out at the gate, having told him I was out of money and didn't have any errands to run.
"My cats are right here beside me," I said.
"It seems to know where it's going," he said.
"It does," I said. "It looks almost like the one we lost last winter."
Last winter, when Pastel died and Serena was very ill from eating poisoned meat, Silver seemed to be affected too. Serena didn't want anyone else seeing that she was ill. Silver didn't want to displease her mother. Meanwhile a neutered male cat I called Trumpkin, because he was orange and he didn't go home when told to go home, kept meowing around the house. Our Crayola, who eloped with him some time ago, had died and he wanted another wife. (It seems probable that Crayola was one of the casualties of the Bad Neighbor's setting out poisoned meat, and Trumpkin, though he didn't die, ate enough to be ill too.)
Silver is a complaisant beta cat, the sort of social cat whose main goal in life is to please other social cats, with humans at the end of the list of the people she wants to please. That is: she behaves well, but when there's any question of whom to please, as it might be sharing someone's lap with another cat or posing for a picture with another cat's human, she invariably wants to please the other cat. Serena was telling her, "Go away." Trumpkin was telling her, "Come with me." I would have preferred to keep her here but, between Serena's and Trumpkin's demands, my wishes meant nothing to Silver.
So, with my reluctant permission, Silver let herself be petnapped and moved in with Trumpkin's humans. I never was sure who his humans were, but I became fairly confident last spring that they were the ones who'd moved away. They were new in the neighborhood and didn't stay long. I believe Trumpkin was theirs because, after they left, he looked and acted like a homeless cat. He became ill. Then he stopped coming around at all.
What had become of Silver? Well...when she'd been making her decision to leave me, she'd come back from another house where she was obviously pampered. Having her very own lap to sit on might have meant a lot to her. She'd stopped traipsing back and forth through the neighborhood. Knowing that she'd been ill, I thought she might have died, but I'd cherished a hope that she'd moved away with Trumpkin's humans and become their indoor pet.
But this cat looked like Silver...only smaller. Older. Sicker.
"Some people in the neighborhood had a cat that looked a bit like mine, only with different spots--but I think it was a bigger cat, male," I said, considering the cat who was now shivering at the gate. "This one looks smaller than mine. Might be a cousin or a half-sister."
The cat limped up into the not-a-lawn and sniffed at Drudge and Serena. They were polite, but didn't want to get too close.
"That must be your cat, or the others would be fighting with her," the odd jobs man laughed.
"Social cats make friends," I said. "Something's wrong with her, anyway."
I brought out kibble for all three cats, although mine had already had breakfast. I put the dish for the cat who looked like Silver in a cage; she went in for isolation. She seemed very hungry. I tried to remember exactly how Silver's spots had looked. I needed to look at old pictures of Silver to let myself believe that this wretched shivering stray was our cat princess come home.
She let me pick her up, accepting but not returning any displays of affection. (Serena doesn't like to see other cats acting as if they thought they were my pets. Silver always was a Secret Snugglebunny.) She knew where the kibble was kept. She knew where to scratch the door to get me at least to shout at her to stop. She didn't really answer to her name, but when I said, "Aren't you Silver? Are you another cat who looks a bit like Silver? Is your name Spot? Gray Lady? Miss Kitty?" she walked away looking offended.
She did not have a fever, or visible wounds. Maybe she was only shivering because she'd become accustomed to being indoors? It was a damp, chilly day.
I didn't want to upset Serena or Drudge by making too much fuss over her; she'd been here for two days before I had a good look at her underside.
The thing I'd hoped wouldn't happen to Silver, because she's shown the Seralini Effect...had happened.
Somebody had trapped, spayed, and released a cat whose health depends on her being able to flush toxins out of her body through the bodies of stillborn or short-lived kittens. You know, that sort of blithe assumption that they know best that some people love to make..."Three days after her hysterectomy, Jane went on safari hunting lions."
She was limping because the shaved patch on her underside had barely had time to form a scar. She was weak, but irritable, with reactions to anesthetics and antibiotics, and to chemical vapors against which she's lost her primary natural defense.
She did not belong to the person who had her spayed. That person had very likely found her on the road as she made her way home, having decided she didn't want to be the only cat in the family.
That person needed to be told in very strong terms: If you don't own a cat, if you don't know it well, if you can't keep it in your house after the operation, don't bother your head about having it spayed. In some cities feral cats may still be a nuisance. In my part of the world we need more, not fewer, free-roaming farm cats and there are waiting lists for kittens whose parents had the mental capacity to be real pets. And we still allow wholesale poisoning of humans and animals by spraying chemicals into the air everyone has to breathe...poisoning that I've watched kill many animals outright, but that Silver has been able to resist because her body has sequestered toxins in non-viable kittens. Silver has had exactly one kitten who lived to adulthood.
Silver did not come home to die. She is a loving and lovable cat. She came home to be with her friends and family. They know and like her, though they're still making it clear that she smells disgusting and they don't want her to be close to them yet. But now every time the Bad Neighbor sprays poison, claiming he's trying to clear farm land, having no intention of farming but wanting to make other people feel bad whenever they are doing outdoor work or gathering to celebrate occasions in the neighborhood, I'll wonder whether I'll find Silver's body...where I found her adoptive uncle Traveller's body? Where I found her sister Swimmer's? Where I found her sister Pastel's?
Sometimes I feel that I could positively enjoy the job of pumping glyphosate into convicted spray poisoners and watching them die.
Federal law now provides legal measures for people who have been harmed, or whose animals have been harmed, by the fools and deliberate evildoers who are still spraying poison on their gardens. We can sue those individuals for damages. The more lawsuits, I think, the better; anyone buying "herbicides" to maintain a tacky fake-Astroturf "lawn" deserves to lose his shirt in court, but money paid to a human is not likely to give much comfort to an animal who has been ill. Or died.
Silver is on the screen porch watching me type this. Her eyes are half shut. She does not look comfortable. She eats hungrily enough--she looks as if she might have picked up worms this summer--but then afterward she looks as if she may not be keeping food down. But her facial expression (cats don't have as many variations of facial expressions as humans do, but their eyes and ears do express things) looks grateful. I think she's glad to have found that her home is still here.
