She Squeaks

Alabama is the third cat in my life, but she's first in many ways. She's the first girl. She's the first with an i-don't-care-if-you-pick-me-up-and-throw-me-across-the-room mentality. She's the first one that stayed skinny after a year. She's the first one that doesn't meow.

Yeah, you heard me. She never has meowed in her entire life. She squeaks.

I found her on the sidewalk on Connecticut street in Lawrence some six years ago. I thought she'd been hit by another car, so I pulled over to find her body. She popped up out of a sewer grate, curled around my leg, and squeaked. She was tiny; weighed less than a pound when I found her and was all skin and bones. She quite plainly asked to come home with me.

She has since filled out and grown up and has an adorable coat of multicolored fur that often makes her look like caramel and chocolate melted together. Or sometimes like an Ewok. And she's quite cuddly and malleable.

But she looks at our other cat like he's the weird one when he meows at us. She admonishes him in squeak-speak. It makes me laugh.