Grace's Tale

Is out too late in the day for a Caturday Tail?

A couple of years after two barn cats had started us off with seven kittens, wild momma #3 showed up. She had been an occasional visitor which we hadn't seen for a while, when she showed up with her brood of five kittens, then died, when they were barely weaning age.

Three of the kits were identical, all white, except Beauty had a faint gray streak across one side of the top of her head, and Grace had its mirror, so we could tell them from Snowy.

One got stepped on early, in our houseful of kids and kits, and that was the end of Beauty.

Snowy was the only cat I ever had to go scrape off the road. We know a service truck came by while we were gone that day. We figure curious Snowy got on the truck, then jumped off just outside the gate, and, I hope, died immediately. One of our sons had 'specially taken to Snowy after a previous white cat had met an untimely end. That was hard.

Not long after that, Grace's gray streak disappeared. No longer needed, I guess.

Grace long outlived her four siblings. She developed cancer common to white cats, but lived with that several years before it got bad. She was old. She had that waddling hanging-down belly some old cats get. A really nice cat. Left white fur everywhere, of course. The price we pay.

When we buried her last year, it was the end of a long chapter which had begun with that stray dying mama bringing us her babies. The last of that brood of five, And the last of the white triplets.