Hi All,

This is a sad tale.  It happened in West Hempstead, NY many years ago.
Around the corner from DH lived Mary C, long since  grown into a dear
woman of an age with yours truly, but the beginning of this story
takes place when she was a teenager.  

She and DH were inseparable.  They would do all sorts of girly things
together.  They discovered boys together.  My dear heart, Lynda, and
Mary would leave for junior high and later high school early every day
and stop to use the ladies room of the local gas station to help each
other put on lipstick and eyebrow pencil.  Then they would each roll
the waistband of their skirts up to shorten them.  These things, of
course, had to be done in secret as the girls were not permitted to
leave the house that way.

I've mentioned The Puss Puss many times and I miss that  old cat, but
Mary had a cat too, Midnight.  Midnight was an unfixed female and
Lynda once got to  see her giving birth to a litter of kittens.  Since
Puss Puss was fixed and Midnight was not, there was no need for any
rivalry between them and they got along together as well as could be
expected.

Things happened fast for Mary after high school.  Marriage and a baby
soon followed, as well as moving away from home.  Midnight was to stay
behind and become her parent's cat.  This ran contrary to Midnight's
wishes though.  She was a one-person cat and her one person was gone.
It hurt Mary to hear that Midnight had started staying away longer and
longer and finally never came home again.

Mary was an independent sort who, though she became a single mom, was
determined to make it on her own.  Through several jobs and numerous
moves  the years passed, and she was sure that Midnight must have met
her end huddled alone in an alley someplace.

The day came when, in spite of her best efforts, jobs and places to
live broke down all at once for Mary and she had to move back with her
parents temporarily.  She had been there for about a week when there
was an insistent mewing at the back door.  Upon opening the door, Mary
discovered an tattered, scarred, and weatherbeaten old black cat.
Mary wondered what had driven this animal of the streets to mew at her
door -- it didn't even occur to her as she opened a can of tuna for
the poor beast that it could be Midnight.

Slowly it dawned on Mary.  This WAS Midnight.  She must have been
seventeen or eighteen years old and had survived who could guess how
many litters of kittens.  She had also survived the icy winters, rainy
springs and falls, and the hot humid summers.  All Midnight knew was
that she was still a one-person cat and that her person had finally
come home.

I wish that this story had a happy ending.  Both Mary and Midnight
deserved a happy ending such as Puss Puss and Lynda had after Puss
Puss had to spend what was probably her fourteenth year lost on the
streets.  Mary took Midnight to the vet who told her that the kindest
thing to  do would be to put Midnight down.  Sobbing, Mary assented.
She took one more day to spend with her long-lost kitty and returned
to the vet's office for a final goodbye.

I've been meaning to write this story for some time.  I'm sorry it's
so sad.  I just thought that someone should pay tribute to the old
girl's will to live and to her undying hope that some day her person
would return to love her once more.

Regards and Tears,
O J