In Memory of No Name

            For the past three years, I have fed stray cats.  It is hard not to become attached to a cat you feed that long.  Although they come to eat, they still come and go as they please.  I have heard that if you feed a cat, then it becomes yours.  I find this not so as I can’t place a hand on most of them.  Many keep their distance as they are scared of a human.

            I have seen other neighbors sometimes put out food.  But they don’t place out daily.  The cat stops going there.  And so; did that make the cat theirs only while they put out food?  I know that if I stopped with the food, they would move on.  They are not mine.  A cat is an independent animal.  But I have picked out a name for each that comes.  When talking about them, it makes my stories easier to tell.  There’s always that one that grabs at your heart.  For me, it was “No Name.”  In naming some of the cats, I couldn’t come up with a suitable name.  And so what popped out of my mouth was, “No Name.”  For years she became a fixture at my door going out to the patio.  I would look out the glass in the door and see her sitting there.  I could see her mouth move.  And whether I actually knew what she was saying or not, I imagined she was saying with her meow,

            “I’m hungry!  Come out here and feed me!"  And so I would get up and go feed her.  Usually most of the other cats had been fed and moved on.  But “No Name” knew she could get more; and it was those special treats she looked forward to.

            We had an old chair on our patio and “No Name” brought four kittens to live in that chair.  It was a safe place and it brought her kittens close to the food.  It was now she would work on weaning her kittens to solid food and water.  “No Name” had done a fantastic job.  She was a good mother.  We were finally beginning to be able to rub her.  It was no doubt in our minds that “No Name” was coming around to our touch.  She was beginning to trust me and my son.

            I don’t live in a busy subdivision.  But still, many people drive faster than they should.  It was early one morning that we found “No Name’s" lifeless body lying in the street.  She had been hit by a car.  She was removed and buried immediately.  From a shed we had with the door partly open, I heard the cries of her kittens.  They were little strays and beyond our picking them up.  Would they make it without mother?

            I don’t know the communication of other cats.  But I do know that the other strays have accepted the four kittens.  They allow them to eat among them.  Sometimes they sit back allowing the four to eat first.  I can’t touch the four as they won’t allow it.  But they do walk among my feet as I put out the food.

            “No Name” is gone.  It has been a few weeks now and the kittens continue to stay.  After all, “No Name” gave them the only home they know.  And as long as I can continue to afford to feed them, I will.  I owe this to “No Name.”  I do miss her coming to my door.