The storms continued today, causing much depression in those who would seek hidden eggs and those who would picnic. My roommate and I had plans to do neither, deciding instead to just feast on cheapish Easter candy and enjoy the day. We knew the enjoyment would be short-lived though. Even early in the morning, it was already very dark outside. Around seven, it went from darkish to pitch black. That odd sort of foreboding one feels before a storm set in and we knew it was going to be an eventful evening.
Tonight though, we knew this for another reason as well. Alice, our little outside-cat-turned-part-time-inside-cat, walked into the living room and let out the loudest and saddest meow I've ever heard. It was full of fear and panic. As soon as she could be, she was up in my roommate's arms.
Alice, being a cat raised in the outside, is usually a brave little thing. Actually, she can be a bit scary. She's quite good at killing things. One time she left the head and guts of a rabbit on the porch. We've seen her take on possums, dogs, and cats twice her size. She isn't afraid of us at all. She's always very vocal about what she wants and when she's displeased.
Storms though . . . storms are big. Storms are lack of light and lack of warmth and full of stinging rain and dangerous chunks of painful hail. Storms can flood and freeze and summon winds that can spin into tornadoes.
Alice knows all this and has suffered through it. We don't know how old she is, but we know that before we adopted her, all of her life had been spent outside. Sure, there are enough abandoned houses around us for her to have found some shelter, but that doesn't take away the fact that storms are scary.
My roommate held her and spoke soothingly to her. When he had to get up for something, he transfered her to me. I cuddled the little ball of shivering cat against me and let her bury her face against my arm. She doesn't really like me as much as she likes him and tends to get away as soon as possible. During the storm though, she made no attempt to move.
As I held her, I thought about all the work my roommate has put into this cat. How he coaxed her into letting him pet her, how he would talk to her and sit on the porch and let her get used to him. I thought about the night he finally brought her in, our little Christmas gift. Of all the changes he's made in Alice's life, I think the biggest and most important is that she now knows she has People. Not just a place to go and eat or a place to hang out when it's cold, but People who will listen to her. People who love her and will hold her when she's scared during the big bad storm.
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