So, apparently today is #blackcatday. Who knew! There’s a day for everything. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to tell my brother’s favorite story from our childhood. It all started with his black cat, Sabertooth (Sabe).
Okay, so this isn’t actually his cat. Sabertooth died several years ago, but she looked just like this. She was probably the greatest hunter cat in all of Western New York. There was a tree outside our house that had a hollow where a family of birds would nest every year. It was a different family of birds every year, because she would sit on the branch outside the hollow and wait, patiently picking off a bird at a time until the entire family was gone. The next year, a different family of birds would think they hit the jackpot for a house until they realized why that space was unoccupied.
I was around 7 or 8 when I found an injured bunny in the back yard. It had to only be days, maybe weeks old. When I discovered the creature, it’s leg was hurt, so I begged my mom to let me nurse it back to health. She reluctantly agreed. I kept it in a box and fed it with a medicine dropper until it grew healthy enough to be released.
The day of its freedom came, and I made a ceremony of the bunny’s release, carrying it into the brush at the edge of our property. “Goodbye, little bunny! Run away! Be free!” I’m pretty sure there were tears of joy and accomplishment because after all, it had been my intervention that saved this creature’s life.
I’m not sure if it was later that day or the next when I answered the meow at the back door to let Sabe inside. Opening the door, I was greeted with a present from the cat: a dead rabbit. Correction: a rabbit head. Only the head. The head of that bunny I worked so hard to nurse back to health.
Needless to say, I cried and screamed and cried.
In the background, my brother, Matt, mua-ha-ha-ed his way through a maniacal laugh. To this day if you ask him about the rabbit head, he’ll bellow out a guffaw at one of the best moments of his childhood, the moment his cat tormented his little sister. (END NOTE: Matt and I actually get along now, but I’ll never forgive his cat for that moment.)
Please, tell me your black cat story. Or just your cat story.
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