First of all, thank-you very much to all of you visitors! I feel quite welcomed and very much the 21st century cat to have all these new friends in the 'Sphere. Everytime she leaves the computer on I click over to your blogs and bookmark 'em, but she comes back from the bathroom really fast and I don't want her to know how smart I am. Yet. She doesn't use the PC very often because she hunts really long hours sometimes on Saturday too, so I don't get much chance to blog on. It is taking me a while to organize her.

OK, some of you asked for more of how I got in here sooo...

That night it was reeeeally cold AND wet, so cold that ice balls instead of snow covered the ground so deep I couldn't see my paws, and I climbed up in the tree to stay out of it. I stayed in an old squirrel nest that was still pretty tight, and from it I could see down into her whole yard.

In the morning she brought the old dog out before she went hunting for things.

Five mornings in a row she would get up before the sun came out and would get in her car and drive away. She would come back after the sun went in with things-food, or not food things. I didn't know much about the things she brought that weren't food because I'd not lived in a people's house yet. I knew the things weren't food. If I had eaten and was full I would think about what she did with the things that weren't food, but mostly I thought about the food things she brought back from hunting.

Gator didn't look happy at all about walking in, on, through the ice balls. He did his business and dragged her back to the house, and I knew it was warmer in there, and I wished I could go in there with him. Besides me wanting to be warm, he didn't look right and I wanted to go in and curl up with him to make him feel better even though I knew he did not like cats. She always told him "NO Kitty Frisbie, Gator." The way she said it and the way he looked so disappointed when she said it told me Kitty Frisbie is probably not a game the Kitty would like. But I still wanted to snuggle him. Maybe he would learn to like me the way the dog at the shelter did.

One time an old dog came into the shelter before I was adopted and because there was so many dogs and cats the shelter people had to put the newest dog in a cage right next to mine.

He said he was old, and tired, and knew the shelter people would send him to the Bridge, and he was so miserable I felt sorry for him and got right up against the wire by him. I cleaned up the parts of him I could reach, and it made him feel better. He said so.

A real rescue lady took him home to die with dignity at her place. For all I know, he is still alive. Maybe.

But I didn't get a chance to do that for old Gator. While I was still trying to figure out how to get out of the tree, she left to go hunting. When she came back much later, I was back up the tree. So I couldn't sneak in the door when she was coming in.

She brought him out into the dark, he did his business and I could tell he was even worse. That was the last time I saw him alive.

For seven more mornings and nights he didn't come out of the house, but more people came into it, even while she was gone hunting, and I knew they were taking care of Gator while she was hunting. When she would come home she would try to coax him to eat and drink. I know he drank water but she could not get him to eat. I know because I came down every night after she got there and listened at the door.

By now I was about the only cat eating the food she was putting out; I had to fight all the others, and told them they should just go beg somewhere else because this is my food now. Two of the freeloaders had furever homes, they just wanted something different, so I defined the phrase "Git yer own!" for them, and they were so ashamed they slunk off and didn't come back until after I moved in.

So I could listen at the door without too much distraction, and I heard her talking to him. I also shamelessly eavesdropped when she called her son's friend to ask him to let Fox know Gator-really his dog-was dying. I heard her say "Ed, I think he is holding out for Fox to come say good-bye, I really do. If we turn his bed away from the door he struggles to get his head back to it."

Man, that got me! So when she would leave, I would stay by the door and try to talk to him, but he was so sick that he never answered.

On the seventh night that he didn't come out I could hear his breathing had got really hard, and I knew he was hanging on to say good-bye to her. Finally her car came in and she went inside.

After a little while I knew he was dead because I heard her call his name and then start crying. And then a lot of people came and I went up the tree because I didn't much like people then.

That Gator was a people size dog. It took two people to carry his body, wrapped in a plastic thing, outside. They put it down in the back yard by the big oak tree. The women were crying and the men were practical. I heard one say "Thank-God for the cold." The others agreed and I knew they would not be able to put his body in the ground until the sun came out again; I knew that the cold would keep the coyotes away from disturbing his body.

It took them a long time to make a big enough hole and I watched the whole thing from the squirrel nest. They had to use a people thing called a pick-axe (I had to look that word up at the online dictionary so I could spell it right, I am one smart cat!) but the men and a couple of the women from the nieghbourhood got it done and finally Gator's body was decently buried.

I knew she was a good people! One of the shelter ladies used to talk to all of us inmates-that's was she called us-and she was all the time talking about furever homes and the people who would love us so much they would make sure when we crossed the Bridge our bodies would be given a decent burial instead of...never mind the instead. It is one of those shelter memories I don't like.

Every night when she got home from work (She calls hunting "work". Well, it is, isn't it?) she would go around to the backyard to visit Gator's grave. Even before she would put her catch inside. She would say his name, and I began to understand moving in was gonna take longer than I thought.

But she kept putting the food out for us cats, well, just me really but she didn't know that.

The day after he died, when she got back from work, she came outside and called Fox's friend Ed again to tell him what happened. Naturally I listened.

"He died exactly a week after the stroke! He had the stroke Thursday night, Feb 1st at 9 o'clock, and Ed, I swear, he died last night, Thursday the 8th, at 9:11. I don't know what I'll do without him, he's been there with us, and then me after everything with the divorce, for all but three months of his nearly thirteen years. Yeah, he was three months short of thirteen. 24th May 1994 to 8th Feb 2007."

Yowsa, he WAS old!

"I know, I know, Boxers don't usually live that long, 8 or 9 years at best usually. He was such a great dog!" They talked for a while longer, then she shut the phone and went back inside.

I knew about divorce. My fur mother told me that is why we ended up in the box. Her people got a divorce, and everybody went to live in different places, and some of the kids didn't talk to one or the other of the parents, and the parent that got the kid that was mad at the other one didn't want a cat and kitten litter, so out we went.

So, I thought, this two leg got a divorce. From listening to her phone conversation I figured things out. Her son was got grown-up at the same time as the divorce, and moved out of her house, and he blamed her for the divorce, so they didn't talk, but SHE kept his dog that he couldn't take. She kept his dog and loved it so well the dog lived nine whole years with her alone after the divorce. But she never saw her son because he was still mad at her.

Stoopid Fox! (Who names their son Fox, anyway?)