When I was fifteen, I spent a lot of time with friends who had a couple of cats.  Shemee, and Black and Whitey, but we called her BW.  Shemee, a big black male, would often spray on the television (sometimes while we were watching TV – the brazen cad), and a couple of other areas, and BW was a slender girl who would also ‘spray’ in the same areas after Shemee had sprayed.  My friends had Shemee neutered shortly after he started spraying, but he continued to spray (although my friends seemed to think that the operation would end his spraying).  BW continued to ‘spray’, and would often try to mount Shemee, but Shemee would slap her down.

Both were indoor/outdoor cats, and my friends had hoped that BW would have a litter of kittens before they got her spayed.  BW seemed to think she was male, so I doubted she’d ever have kittens.  There was a big white Tom cat with one blue and one green eye who roamed the neighborhood.  He was usually sweet-natured to humans, but you could see from the chunk out of his ear, and other scars that he’d been in a few fights.

A few years went by and BW still did not have kittens, so my friends assumed she was barren.  One of my friends saw the big white Tom catch her later that year, and we wondered if she’d have a successful litter, and if she’d realized she was, in fact, a she.  The big day came, and BW was in labor.  She had a box in the closet lined with some soft rags, and was mewing piteously for a while, finally birthing – one kitten.  She was a good mama though, very attentive and sweet.  She stopped trying to spray the television, or mount other cats after that too.

Her kitten was an all white male, proving to have one blue, and one green eye as he grew.  My friends let BW get pregnant once more before getting her spayed, and she had a litter of six that time.

BW was a special cat to me, sleeping with me the times I stayed over my friends’ house, and always coming to me for attention.  My friends moved away a year or so later, and I never saw them, Shemee, or BW, again, but they remain fondly in my memories.

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© seekingsearchingmeaning (aka Hermionejh) and Life On Earth’s Blog, 2010 – infinity.