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My favorite cat wasn't even mine.

About a decade or so ago, I was heading out to the alley to take a bag of garbage to the big can that was shared with the other tenants in my apartment building. As I was about to unload my burden, suddenly something flew out of the can and streaked past me. When it got to a safe distance, it stopped and looked at me.

It was a scrawny, mangy black cat with green eyes.

While not really a cat person, I am an animal lover, and my heart went out to the furry ragamuffin. I kneeled down and spoke softly to it. Slowly, it mustered up the courage to come over to me. Once it did, and saw I wasn't going to harm it, it rubbed against me and allowed me to pick it up.

I could feel nearly every bone it its body. Clearly, it had been looking for food amongst the garbage. I didn't have a cat of my own, therefore no cat food- but I found a can of noodles with turkey and a creamy sauce. I didn't know if the little cat would accept it, but it was worth a try.

The cat devoured it!

I saw that it was a female, and had had a recent litter, because she had milk. This poor little mother cat was starving, yet still had to feed her kittens! She also had several bald patches all over her scrawny frame.

No big surprise, but the next day the cat was still around. This time she had her babies with her. They were terrified of me and ran wildly when I approached them. But when they saw their mother sitting quietly on my lap, everything changed. Suddenly I had kittens mewing and crawling all over me!

I don't know what happened to them, but by the next day or two the kittens were gone. I'm afraid they fell victim to a cat-hater in the neighborhood, but I don't know. I do know there was little I could do with them. I had no car, so couldn't take them to an animal shelter. And I certainly couldn't keep them. Plus, the local animal shelter was so swamped with other, more urgent cases, that calling them would've been futile.

But the little black cat was still around. I didn't mind feeding her, as it was obvious nobody else was. Cat food was now a regular grocery-list item.

I taught her how to play. She had apparently never done it before. I bought one of those furry mice on a string attached to a stick, and once she caught on she'd go sailing through the air after it. She even saw where I had put it the day before, and the next day when I let her in, she retrieved it all by herself and strutted proudly with the "mouse" in her jaws and the stick bobbing along behind her!

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