Cats, family, phones, and other fixtures of life.

I went to see my father tonight, to get my new phone with new service and hang out for a bit. I had not seen him since mid January, crazy considering I live half an hours drive from him. He showed me the progress on his house which is nearly done compared to the last time I saw it, and his new beehives, I played fetch with his dog a little as we walked around. He gave me my phone and helped me start my taxes and sat mostly in silence with me. Asking me about my pets, my friends, my boy, during lulls in working out my taxes.
He told me about my little cat, Alanna, that she wasn't with us any more. She would have been eight this August, my tiny orange baby girl. When I got my first cats I got two, mother and daughter dumped at a friend of a friend's home during a party. The mother cat turned out to be pregnant again and soon I had seven cats. My pride, my feline family. I gave one of the kittens to a friend and it was the six of them and me. They would follow me and come to my call, I loved them desperately. We would go into the woods and they would cry if I left them behind til I stopped and waited. I had named some of them after Greek gods and some after characters in a book. Over the years, before I left home and since, they had disappeared, usually more than one at a time. I would speak to my father and he would mention he had not seen this cat or that cat. I don't know if they died or were taken in. Alanna, my father told me, had been having her eye act up again. When he took her to the vet they gave him something to feed her and something to apply to the eye, and they drained a cyst on her side as well, my father treated her for two days and then she vanished. He thought she might be mad about the medicine, but she never came back. He told me how the neighbors cat had been giving her trouble, he was sure if she had fallen prey to something in the woods because of her impaired sight or lost a fight to one of those cats. Or if she had merely found some people who would let her inside and fed her something better than he did.
Only one of my kitties remains on this earth that I know of. Apollo, sweet golden cat, living with my former best friend. I have not seen him in ages, but I know he is still out there, my sweet kitten. I miss them.
M.