Some Comfort Here

 I am the product of Catholic School. From kindergarten to college, hard to believe, I know, when you think about me and my ability to follow rules. 

When I turned sixteen, the girls at Mount Saint Mary's Preparatory School for Young Women started confirmation classes. The classes were held at my elementary school: Saint Christopher's K-8 Catholic School. Nobody in my house was able to drive me to the classes so I walked on Saturday mornings; classes started at 8am.

I was used to walking where I needed to go and happily set out most Saturdays. There was an abandoned garage at the back of a restaurant property on my way that housed what seemed to me at the time about 700 feral cats. I remember the first two Saturdays being snowy and bitterly cold as classes started in February. I couldn't walk by the garage without looking in and seeing the cats looking rough with their ribs showing, some pregnant, and some battered. A few would jog out when they saw me, meowing, hissing and crying forlornly as they tried to decide if they should get close to me. 

Those feral cats were always the last thought and picture in my head before I went to sleep. I started dreaming about them; they plagued me. 

It always seemed to me they were screaming, "How can you walk away? Why won't you help me?" 

I'm not really a bleeding heart type, except when it comes to animals. I can't watch a movie where animals are hurt in any way- people know they have to preview it for me. If I get surprised, I walk away - no flexibility in me for this. Whenever I hear that Sarah MacLachlan song on the TV, I run out of the room as fast as I can.

While in high school, I babysat for money. I had a good gig going. I had a family everyday of the week. I made BANK. So, I just decided, I would have to feed the feral cats or I could never go to sleep again. 

I started getting up even earlier on Saturdays so I could walk to the grocery store near the restaurant, buy some dry cat food, walk to the garage and throw the food around so the cats could eat every Saturday. The cats started expecting me; they would come running out when they saw me coming. Many of them would follow me around while I was throwing cat food like chicken feed.

Unbeknownst to me, the garage got razed and I don't know what happened to all the cats. I showed up one Saturday with some cat food and there were no cats to feed. I had to carry that food to St. Christopher's and try to explain why I brought cat food to class, and then again to my family when I showed up after class with a bag of cat food. We ended up giving it to a shelter.

This weekend at the house we are staying in, there are feral cats living under the house. Of course I bought a bag of dry cat food today and my nephew and I placed a bowl full of food under the house. 

How could I not?