Cats

My mom would always tell us not to pet or feed stray animals that came up to the house.  One afternoon the kids and I came home from taking my daughter to dance practice, and there was this cute little kitten on the back porch.  My mom said don't feed it or pet it and it will go away.  So we didn't, but she did!  She said it just wouldn't leave and she couldn't stand to see it hungry.  She was really cute, her legs were colored up in a way to make her look like she had on boots, so that's what we named her.  She grew up there and had one litter of kittens.  One of them was the blue gray color of smoldering smoke, thus the name Smoky.  We gave away all of the kittens except Smoky.  A few months later Boots got run over, and we were down to one cat.  My mom said she didn't want any more kittens so as soon as Smoky was old enough we had her fixed.  She became part of the family.  She would catch rabbits, squirrels and any thing else that moved. I had just started to work at a new job and I got a call from home.  My daughter was all upset, she said the cat had a stick in her and I needed to come home right away.  So the folks I worked for said it was alright for me to go.  When I got home the whole family was all tore up including my mom.  There sitting in the kitchen window was Smoky with a stick poking in her stomach and you could almost see the other end coming out her back.  I threw a thick towel over her, expecting her to go crazy when I picked her up, but she didn't.  She was very calm, like she knew that I was going to get her help.  I didn't have a box to put her in, I just laid her on the seat of the car and off to the vet we went.  He called in a few hours and said she had used up one of her nine lives!  The stick had missed all of her internal organs and she would be just fine.  She lived a long time after that.  Then on a cold March night she too was killed by car.  It's amazing how we become so attached to our pets.