Sad news for the Oliveri clan this week: our cat Ninja was hit by a car.
We didn’t get a lot of details. Sunday my wife was told a neighbor found her in the street, and our next-door neighbor carried the body out into the bean field behind our houses so my kids wouldn’t see her. I never did find the body to make sure it was her, but it’s been a few days now so we’re assuming the worst. I just hope whoever hit her didn’t do it on purpose.
I’m not a cat person, but as cats go, she was a good cat. I got her from a co-worker after their cat had a litter, and she would have been five years old around Halloween. We named her Ninja both because it was cool and because her job was to kill mice. She did a pretty good job of keeping the mice out of the house, and on rare occasions she caught a small rabbit or a bird. She was great with the kids, and if they went out to play in the yard, she would often hang out nearby.
Tomorrow the kids and I are going out to pick up a new cat. A nearby animal control facility has several kittens, and we felt it would be appropriate to rescue one before the county has to euthanize it. Normally we’d wait, but we want a cat that will be big enough to chase mice when harvest season comes around. Once the tractors hit the fields, the mice flee for the houses, including ours.
Now I just have to talk them out of their proposed names like Cheeseburger, Master Chief, and – I shit you not – Dictionary.
About Mike Oliveri
Mike Oliveri is a writer, martial artist, cigar aficionado, motorcyclist, and family man, but not necessarily in that order. He is currently hard at work on the werewolf noir series The Pack for Evileye Books.
Sorry to hear it, man.
Was this the cat that you gave the “finger” to?
Sad news about Ninja’s demise,
Troy
P.S. Get a boy cat and name him Dictionary or Dic for short!