Boots 1959! From a 55 yo woman who will never forget
Boots was a cat I had a short time as a little girl about 7. She was a gray and white tuxedo cat. There were no other little girls to play with in my neighborhood except the troubled little girl across the street. Her mother was my mothers best friend and they wanted me to play with her. She was not very nice. Boots was the only friend I had growing up. I used to dress him in doll clothes and feed him milk out of toy baby bottles. He would sit on my old upright piano where the music is supposed to go and listen to me play for hours. He would sleep on my pillow and let me play with his "toe pads" as my mother called them.
After about two years, the lady caddy-corner to us was waiting for me in her driveway as I walked home from school one day. She asked if I had a gray and white cat. I said yes. She said he was in her garage and when her daughter got out of the car he had scratched her daughter (two years older than I). I had lived there all my life. This family never, ever, ever put their garage door down.The daughter was always entering beauty contests so a cat scratch was a major issue I guess.. I don't know what happened because I was a kid and was never told anything, but it became evident that we were taking Boots to the pound. I had a TV tray for him to eat under as his "cafe". My mother fed him one last can of cat food. I watched him eat every bit of it. I thought of it as a send off, but now I realize she was just getting rid of extra cat food.
No one comforted me or even said anything to me about it. Back then kids were to be seen and not heard. My parents just picked him up, got in the car and left and I never saw my best friend again. That night, under my open window, some cats howled for a while.
The shelter was definitely a kill shelter, but I like to think that maybe some child adopted him. There may even be pictures of him in someones old photo album. Or maybe an old lady adopted him. He could have been an outdoor cat and gotten run over by a car or killed by dogs. I will wonder for the rest of my life. I don't even have a picture of him. I guessed when we got him that he had probably been born about September 23. So every September 23 I remember him. And lots of other times, too.
Back then in the 1950's there were no leash laws. I know. I was terrified of dogs and they were everywhere running loose. I had heard people talking about cats wandering the neighbor hood and distinctly remember people saying you can't pen cats up. So why did my best friend have to die?
