On the overstufffed chair in my living room Baby Kitty was laying in the boneless way they do, where it looks like the have more paws than you first thought because of the way they lay their legs crossed one over the other, over the other...The sun, the bright new one was coming in the window, shining on the spot she chose because of her instincts that tell her where it will be at just the right time of day. And silky and warm, she'd breathe, little lungs filling and unfilling with slow, gentle respirations. I'm so often compelled to disturb her slumber and pick her up in her grogginess where she so easily slips slippery through my hands, like trying too hold onto a fur covered bag of jelly. And she'll almost slinky down my body but I will catch her with my thigh to boost her back, and I scoop her into my arms like a baby and she goes right back into her contented sleep, not because she loves me, but because I'm an adequate sun replacement.

She'll often put her little head on the place on my arm between my shoulder and elbow, right above where the artery beats my blood and makes it warm. She'll purr but not loudly. She's like me and never loud. Rarely do I even hear her make a mew. Sometimes at night I'll hear her making noise when all are in bed because her shyness dissipates with her solitude and she talks to herself.

I was thinking about when I was 19 and married, living on a farm not far from here. I say it was with a husband, but it was really with a bunch of animals. He was a secondary consideration when agreeing to the union. I really just wanted a horse.

I had two cats though, tabby brothers. I called them Kit and Kiki which were kind of pussy names for these brawny Toms. But I would call to them from the patio in the mornings in my girly baby voice, in the way I talk to animals, calling them to eat or because I wanted to make sure they were o.k. and they'd come running from the barn, but more like lumbering with their broad faces and shoulders... they were quite a pair. Meowing, playful hunters who wrestled in the back yard and shared field mice together. Sometimes I would find them curled in together under the willow in the front yard. I'd work in the garden pulling weeds and they'd come through the rows of carrots or potatoes, one always behind the other, with a greeting to me, cheerful and social cats I'd never known, but these two were all about visiting and making friendly. I really felt they had been companioned well, and that I was fortunate that they allowed me into their sphere. And I'd watch them saunter off and shake my head amused at their uncatlike affection for each other and for me.

My nephew Bryan would often come out and stay with me. We had just 9 or 10 years between us so it was like having a brother around while I was playing house. He loved it out there and really enjoyed teasing the cats. He'd jump at them and growl like a dog to see them scatter and run.

It was Summer and I lived on a busy highway, it is the same one that connects the three fair cities in my state and is named for them. The constant drone of semis going by was often white noise to lullaby me to sleep. Bryan was there with me one morning and he went out to feed some of the animals, and I saw him go around front which concerned me. I didn't want him too near the road and it looked like he was chasing something. I went to the front window and like the wildman he was, he was waving his arms at Kit, squawking, and jumping up and down, driving the cat into a frenzy and in the cat's confusion it bolted across the road under an oncoming truck. I saw Kit clear the first set of tires, but not get so lucky when it came to the second. And the farthest ones away caught his back side and ran him over. Bryan stopped his frenetic play and was still, and I lifted my hands to my face in disbelief, then Bryan turned around to look up to the living room window, almost as if he expected I'd be there. And I was.

I ran out the front door and pointed to Bryan to get to the porch and away from the road and I looked carefully right and left, so as not to meet a similar fate under the tires of a giant truck, and I went to see about my cat. When I got to the side of the pavement where he was laying in the soot, he was still breathing and he lifted his head and looked at me. He was frightened and in obvious pain and confused. He meowed trying to get up to greet me, even then. But he couldn't because there was barely anything left of his back legs. I lifted and carried him, his blood dripping up my driveway, to a little house where we kept tools. It was like a shed, but tiny and white with windows high in the building above the door.

Bryan followed me and we went inside and I had him spread a towel on the floor that he found on the shelves and we laid Kit down on it. By this time, the cat was only partly conscious and shaking, his breathing was rapid and it looked like he was quaking inside himself.

We were silent for a little while and the sun shone in through the top pane of the window, making it serene and bright in the little room. It was still and all we could hear were the rales of Kit and the passing of cars on the highway. Kit quivered and trembled and opened and closed his mouth very slowly, his eyes staring out beyond ...

Bryan whispered to me, "What is he doing?"
I whispered back while I stroked Kit's fur, "He's dying."

And we watched. Until Kit was done and his chest quieted, his body stiffened and little eyes glazed over with no more recognition in them of me, or of the life he knew in the barn just a little earlier when it was still dark where he stretched out his striped body from his warm bed in the hay to come to the sound of my voice, "Kitty, kitty... come and eat kitty kitty..." Enthusiastically running with his twin behind him to the back patio to find me, and to the bowl of promise of a new day on a warm Summer morning.