If cats could talk

For a feral, Ginger is pretty tame.  She's been hanging around for over five years and is as docile as many  house cats.  She's certainly easier to work with than a relatively recently moved indoors type of feline hood named Tommy.

The problem with Ginger is that she's usually underfoot.  Under my feet, to be precise.  Whenever I step outdoors alone, Ginger is there.  I can't do much outdoors without Ginger's help.  I can call her any time of day or night and she usually comes running. 

But she didn't come to breakfast the other morning and then missed three more meals.  I expect this sort of behavior from the others occasionally, but never from Ginger.  I was afraid something bad had happened to her.

Ginger finally came back last night but she's not the same.  She was afraid to come up on the porch.  I had to coax her up to feed her.  I checked her over as best I could from a distance.  She didn't appear to be injured.

It was raining really hard this morning.  Usually when it rains, the feral girls hang out on the porch to wait for breakfast.  Ginger wasn't waiting this morning.  Instead, she was crouched under a car.  The owner of the car wanted to use her car, so she set off the car alarm.  The car alarm usually clears the vicinity of felines, but this morning Ginger wouldn't budge.  I finally had to poke under the car with a broom to chase her out. 

This afternoon, I heard some thumping on the porch.  I looked out a window and saw them all, including Ginger, waiting to be fed.  I stepped out with food and my old buddy Ginger looked terrified.  She finally allowed me to pat her and check her more closely for wounds.  I couldn't find anything.  But she kept gazing reproachfully into my eyes.  I know what that means.  She was trying to tell me something telepathically.  As usual, this thick-skulled human couldn't understand her.   But I suspect she was telling me that a human or two had frightened her badly.  She probably wandered across the stone wall and the same butt-holes that had terrorized Salem threw rocks at her.

I can't always understand cat-speak and cats can't always understand me.  Or maybe cats can understand but they choose not to listen.  Because if they did listen, they would know to keep away from those Butt-holes.  Those Butt-holes are...well, they are butt-holes.