My Wise Old Grandmother - Zoey the Cool Cat, page 5

This room is dedicated
to the memory of
Sophie (d. 9/19/07)

Sophie was a stray black cat that came to visit us
on Thanksgiving Day in 2006, so we fed her some
milk. After inhaling the milk, she left and didn’t
return until Christmas Eve 2006. This time she
stayed, and we named her Sophie.

We tried to convert Sophie into an indoor cat, but
she just wasn’t happy being indoors. Sophie
would show up at certain times of the day, meow
very loudly to get inside to make sure her source
of food was still here, and then take off for the
wild outdoors again.

As the months passed by, we got her to stay inside
for longer periods of time, but it was particularly
difficult to get her to stay inside at night since that
was her usual hunting time. We can’t count the
number of gophers she caught, but her record was
five in one 24-hour period. Lizards were another
favorite, although she had more fun playing with
them than making a meal out of them.

Whenever I was outside, Sophie would follow me
around to make sure that I wasn’t going anywhere.
The neighbors used to smile because I could go
for a walk with this little black cat tagging along
about twenty feet behind. If she lost track of me
around a corner, though, she came a-gallopin' until
I was again in her sight.

On September 19, 2007, Sophie was hit and
killed by a car just a block away. We knew
eventually that it would happen—a black cat at
night on black asphalt, and outdoor cats don’t
have near the life expectancy as indoor cats. A
neighborhood woman was kind enough to take her
ID tag off and call us, and she went back with
some towels and wrapped Sophie up and placed
her under some bushes on the curb for us. I gave
Sophie a proper burial on Gopher Hill and created
a little memorial marker for her grave, along with
this memorial picture gallery.

Click on the picture of Sophie’s grave at the upper
left to visit her memorial. The pictures are
thumbnails for faster loading, and then you can
click on the thumbnails to see larger pictures.