The white whisker

Blue was a survivor, the only cat left from her litter.  Unfortunately, she didn't seem able to teach her offspring her survival skills.  The second litter she brought to my porch was a beautiful bunch.  There was a stunning fluffy calico and three black kittens.   At first, it was hard to tell the black kittens apart.  One of them had a strange greenish tint to the fur on his head.  The calico and the more distinctly colored black kitten were the first to disappear. 

The remaining two siblings were nearly clones in appearance but their personalities were opposite.  One was serious and reserved.  It spent much of its time posing and leering like a little gargoyle.  The other cat was a funny little character.  He spent the first couple months stalking me.  When I'd sit outdoors, he'd sit a couple feet away and stare at me like I had two heads.  Finally, one day I picked up a stick and poked it at him.  That behavior was right up his alley.  He attacked the stick and we played for a while.  He liked the stick game so much that so much that every time I went out, he'd pester me until we played.  Like his mother, the kitten was slow to make up his mind about me.  But once he did, he became a cute little pain in the butt.  His habit of sinking his claws into my legs to get my attention earned him his name, Chigger. 

Gargoyle kept his or her distance from me.  Looking out the window one day, I noticed wounds on the kitten's neck.  I kept an eye on her as best I could from afar and she seemed to be healing.  A couple of months passed and I didn't think any more of it.

  The afternoon before I had to take the first batch of kittens to the vet to be altered, I noticed Gargoyle was acting odder than usual.  She spent long intervals crouching in the middle of the yard and staring at the porch.

 Later that night, Vick's two kids, Ninja and Ginger, had just been lured up and locked in the screened porch.  I turned and noticed Gargoyle crouching near the bottom step.  I stepped out and walked over to her.  To my surprise, she didn't run away.  I had never laid a hand on her before but I leaned down and stroked her.  She still didn't run.  She just stared up at me with that strange squint.  Something was wrong.  I picked her up and instead of struggling, she purred.  This made me very uneasy.  Since I was going to the animal hospital in the morning, I decided to bring her along to be examined.  The kittens all hung out together  so I put her on the porch with the other two.  Ginger was curled up in a chair.  Gargoyle wandered over to Ginger, got up on the chair with her and curled up against her.  Everybody seemed contented so I went in and went to bed. 

The next morning when I stepped out on the porch, Ninja was freaking out.  Fur hackled up, he pranced sideways towards one of the house boxes.  I crouched down to look in the box and saw Gargoyle's black fur.  I reached in to touch her.  She was cold. 

Gargoyle was buried near the base of a big pine tree at the edge of the woods.

That morning, seven cats still had an appointment to keep at the animal hospital.  They wouldn't be ready to come home until the next day.  To keep them quiet while they recovered, I decided it was best to keep the two litters separate.  I prepared beds and litter boxes in the house for five patients.  And then I went out to prepare beds and litter boxes for the two porch patients.  While I was working on on the porch, Chigger came to the screen door and began howling and scratching.  I opened the door to let him in.  As he looked up at me, I noticed something very strange.  Overnight, Chigger had grown a single, long, thick, white  whisker. 

Gargoyle had set an eerie precedent.  Until the wrangling was done, I would find a dead kitten every time I prepared to take another group of cats to be altered.