You will find short stories on this site. Most are autobiographical. Some are fiction.

A TABBY’S TALE

When I moved, From Portland to Astoria Oregon in 2006, I moved into a house that had previously been rented to a single mother with two daughters. Once settled in the old house I noticed an unremarkable tabby cat peering at me from a blackberry thicket which lay beyond the far side of my yard. There was a path from my back door to the yard next to the tabby’s blackberry thicket. If I were to go into my yard, when it was there, The tabby would slink back into the jungle of canes out of sight. I came to think of it as an illusive spirit of the brambles.

This cat spirit became more tangible when I found that it had left me a gift. It was a dead mole, placed in my path to the yard. I reciprocated with table scraps from a steak dinner. In exchange I got a dead mouse. The mouse earned the tabby, scraps from a salmon dinner. This intermittent exchange went on for a couple of weeks. Then one morning, I was on my front porch. As usual I was being watched by the tabby from the blackberries. I noticed another cat in my yard. It was one which belongs to a neighbor. The tabby saw it also. I greeted the neighbor’s cat with a mewing sound.

Without a moment’s hesitation, the tabby bounded across the yard, past the other cat, up the stairs onto the porch where I was standing. It looked up at me as if to say “Your move”. I opened the door and the tabby walked in like he owned the place. His risky move was successful. He became the cat of the house.

I named him Brambles. I took him to Dr. Goza for a check-up and to have him neutered. I told Dr. Goza how I had come to have this friendly feral tom cat. In silence he examined him. He shaved a patch on his stomach. Then, pointing to the scar he found there, he said “What you found is a female which has already been spayed.” I was shocked. My bold feral tom cat suddenly became a brave pussy cat. And she had been someone’s pet.

Dr. Goza’s revelation explained a strange occurrence that had happened about a month earlier. Glancing out my front window, I noticed a girl, about 10 years old, coming up the walkway to my house. When I opened the door and asked if I could help, she quickly turned and ran to a waiting car. As she jumped in the car quickly sped away.

The previous occupant of my house had left the house damaged and owing several month’s rent. I had sought to recover the resulting costs but could not locate her. I am confident that the girl was one of her daughters who had come looking for her cat. Her mother must have let her come but told her that if I saw her, she was to run back to the car.

Brambles and I happily shared my house. She was an affectionate little creature who liked to sleep on my lap as I napped in my recliner. A little over a year after she moved into my house another love came into my life. She also had a female cat. The four of us frequently traveled to my other home in Portland. The two cats did not share the loving relationship of their owners. These trips were stressful for Brambles.

One Sunday I was driving back to the coast on Highway 26. Brambles began to meow impatiently. I thought she needed to urinate. So I found a wide clearing and pulled off the highway. I stopped several car lengths away from the highway. I took her out of the carrier and put her on the ground so she could relieve herself. She became terrified at being in a strange place and ran out of the clearing and across the highway into the path of a van. Horrified, I watched her tumbling under a passing van. Obviously injured, she awkwardly ran up the hill into the forest on the opposite side highway. I followed, scrambling up through the understory of ferns, salal, and vine maples searching for her. I repeatedly called “Brambles”. But there was no response. The forest was silent. I thought that she must have died. It seemed like an appropriate final resting place for a cat that had come to me from a blackberry patch.

When it seemed futile to continue my search. I turned to make my way back to my car. I paused and mewed one last time. I listened to the emptiness of the forest. In the quiet, I heard a faint mew. I worked my way back up the hill in the direction of her call and found her lying against a log. She lay on her side with her head on the ground as if dead. I gently picked her up. She moaned. I carried her back to the car, certain that she would not survive the 20-mile trip to Cannon Beach.

She was still alive when we reached town. I called every veterinarian listed in the North Coast phone book. None were open on Sunday. The next morning she was alert but not moving. I drove to Astoria and took her in to see Dr. Goza. He examined her and said “She is a very lucky kitty. She broke her spine but just beyond the point where it would affect any vital functions.” Brambles recovered fully except for her crooked tail.

I didn’t take her to Portland after that. Rather I would leave her in my home with enough food and water for the day or two which I would be gone. I left a window open so she could come and go freely. When I returned after one such trip, she was gone. Though I called the Animal Shelter several times over the following weeks, no one brought them a tabby with a crooked tail. I will never know what happened to Brambles, but I like to think that she found another home, more to her liking.