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Cat Saga: Part II So, my beloved cat Chi of twelve years, my "familiar" was gone. I came to believe she had possibly been attacked by a very large fox that was seen in the neighborhood, shortly thereafter. While foxes supposedly don't prey on cats, this one was seen tracking my neighbor's cat. Chi was older, and tiny. I hoped that a fox was not what had happened to her; however, a small tray of organic veggies that I picked up at the grocery store the next day was labelled, in very tiny letters "Red Fox". I grieved intensely for the first part of that first week, and then began to think perhaps I should get another cat. The emptiness of the house was unbearable. I talked to my neighbor about looking for another cat. Chi left on a Sunday night. It was Thursday of that same week when my neighbor down the road called me, with great excitment. A CAT, she said, and THREE kittens, were hiding under her wood shed. The mother cat was very beautiful and smart, but wild. No one could touch the mother or kittens. Within a day, she had moved them, to a large storage shed next door. The kittens were adorable. . .looking about 6 weeks old and very wild. They ran and hid among the piles of lumber and odds and ends in the shed. They were impossible to catch, or to get more than a glimpse of. Bonnie, my neighbor, sat for hour after hour in this old shed, talking to the kittens, coaxing them with sardines and playing with them, until one by one, she caught them. The first one to come, came on Friday night. She was a little black female and she was terrified. Separated from her mother and two siblings, she cried and cried--but was too wild, to let me comfort her or hold her. I shut her in the bathroom, where she promptly found the smallest hole she could, in behind the sink, under the baseboard. . .and wedged herself in. I panicked. What if she crawled up into the wall and couldn't get out? My neighbor's husband came, and we took apart the baseboard and dragged her out. I stuffed rags into every tiny hole I could find, shut the bathroom door and went to bed. She cried and cried. I couldn't stand it. I brought her up onto the bed with me. I had a biscuit, on my nightstand beside my bed. I fed her little pieces of biscuit, and she purred and purred. I turned off the light, and went to sleep. The next morning, I eventually found her, terrified, under the bed in the next room. She wasn't alone for long. My neighbor Bonnie had caught the two brothers, two orange striped tigers, and they joined her that night in the spare bedroom. I had three terrified wild kittens, hiding under the bed, or wedging themselves in behind the furniture at the least sign of any movement or attempt to touch them. Next to arrive. . . The Mother Cat. To be continued. . . 
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