Miss Elegant

Miss Elegant

Bittersweet. Remembering the day we met. I was looking for someone to take home, and looked all over the room, seeing no one to whom I seemed to appeal, nor, for that matter, who appealed to me. As I stood there, feeling lonely, she came up behind me and tapped me on my right shoulder, and introduced herself.

As we looked into each other’s eyes, there was a meeting of minds. She touched my hand gently, trusting me in a way I did not expect. Just as I did not expect to fall in love at that moment. I had just come there to get a partner. Nevertheless, I checked her out and took her home.

She was incredibly beautiful, with silky black hair and shining golden eyes that seemed to see through my very being. Our snuggling that night was not as others I had known, but quiet and loving, and lots of petting.

Since I had the next day off, we went to the nearby forest to hunt together. She was terrific at hunting out small game for us. We were able to snag two small rabbits to take home to eat. She tended to eat quietly, and never really spoke, except to touch my hand and to look endearingly at me.

One night, a few days after going hunting again, a friend was eating with us. But when he came in the door, spying her, he said, “My, isn’t she the most elegant one I’ve ever seen!” She’s obviously a “Bombay” cat!”

Why do you call her a “Bombay” cat?” I inquired.

When She heard him say this, she sat up proudly on the base of the banister, looked at us with obvious approval, then preened, straightening her fur, licking her paws, etc. From then on, her name was “Miss Elegant” which she seemed to love.

“A Bombay cat is a short-haired breed of domestic cat. Bombays are glossy solid black cats with a muscular build, and have characteristic large bright copper-golden eyes. The breed is named after the Indian city of Bombay in India, which is the habitat of the habitat of the Indian black leopard, which they are said to closely resemble, except in a much smaller form, of course.”

“How do you know all this?” I asked.

“My mother is a veterinarian,” he answered, and she especially is fond of cats, telling me lots of stuff about those she likes best…like the Bombay cats,” he laughed.

 As we ate dinner, she was extremely polite, and waited until the table was being cleaned before asking to sit in our laps, by turns purring contentedly.

       We lived together this way for a couple of years. When I’d had her spayed, she cried as I took her home, but she was not the remembering and unforgiving type of female I’d known before. She actually seemed to forgive me overnight.

       When we weren’t playing with her toys or going hunting together, she would most often sit in a favorite place in the garden, watching everything, and occasionally licking her paws. She was, like most cats, a disciple of cleanliness.

She hated snakes, and would kill any she found in the yard or the garden. It was an amazing thing to watch.

She would approach the snake slowly, until she was almost right at its nose, at which I myself thought was simply insane. She and the snake would look one another in the eye for a few moments, neither moving at all. Then, suddenly, the snake would strike! But Miss Elegant would jump high into the air, avoiding the strike. This would happen in a split second, and she would slap the snake on its head as it went by her. The little dance they were doing would last only a few minutes, until the snake was worn out. Then she would pounce and kill the thing. Bringing it to the door, if I wasn’t there, she would leave it there for me to clean up, a trophy for our collection, as it were.

Miss Elegant had no affinity for small dogs, either. If one somehow got inside the gate, she would run toward it, slinking like a true Black Panther, and slap it right on the end of its nose. She soon had taught the neighborhood pups that HER yard was NOT a pleasant place to explore or do their “business” in.

       These activities, as a sort of routine, went on for a number of years. When she was about fourteen years old, she began to slow down a bit, then a little more. Her snake hunts were obviously getting far more dangerous, so I tried to keep her in the house a lot more, but she was not happy with that, so I began to let her out only when I could watch over her. A number of times, over the next 6 months or so, I would run down off the porch and knock a snake back out of the bushes, but I could tell that she resented it, by the way she looked at me, turned around, and sat at the door, waiting to go inside, thereafter giving me short shrift when I tried to pet her. I told her I loved her anyway, and she would eventually let me back into her good graces. One day, I had to run back into the house for a phone call, having forgotten it inside, and when I came back out, she was fighting a snake. After a few minutes, she finally killed it, but not with her former quickness and strength.

As she walked back to me, she was limping a little from a copperhead bite on her right front paw. And she seemed to be having trouble breathing.

Frantically, I tried to put a little tourniquet around her front leg, and called my friend’s mother, the veterinarian.

       I was told to bring her immediately to the office, as my Miss Elegant looked at me asking for help from her glowing, golden, trusting eyes.

       When we arrived, Mrs. Andersen, the Veterinarian, took her into a treatment room. After about a half hour, she came out, sorrowful, with downcast eyes, she said “Her organs were already breaking down from the poison when you picked her up, because she is so old. She has somehow stiff-armed the death angel, far longer than I would expect.

“Would you like to like to spend a moment with her before we let her go mercifully to sleep? I know you don’t wish her to suffer long,” she added, tears welling up in her eyes.

I went into the treatment area, picked up my little friend and held her like a baby in my arms.

“I’m so sorry you have to go,” I told her, quietly, while softly rubbing her head.

She looked at me with those loving eyes half closed, put up her little paw on my shoulder for a moment, and finally closed her eyes.” I cried.

They offered to give me her ashes when they had finished with her, and I thanked them and went home.

After receiving her ashes, thinking about that day we’d met, I went and placed them in her favorite place in the garden. Some days, I think I even still see her there, killing snakes and warding off puppies.