Mike Oliveri

Sad news for the Oliveri clan this week: our cat Ninja was hit by a car.

Ninja

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.

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