Let me tell you about Miss Trudy. She is another in a long line of pretty gray cats we've had. But she has certainly been different than any of them. The first time I saw Miss Trudy, she was lying beside Miss Trudy. Let me explain.
The human Miss Trudy was a grand old lady of 94 when I met her. She was tiny, withered in a good way like leather well used. She spoke with a gentle English accent that I loved to hear with a laugh that was like bow pulling over string in its floating lyrical manner. I took communion to the human Miss Trudy for two years as she waned. She loved to tell me stories about life in the War (II I reckon), and about her long past husband. She had two cats, one named Herbert after her husband and one named Trudy after herself. In fact, Trudy was Trudy II because there had been another cat, also named Trudy. This was about six years ago, I think.
One day when I was given communion to Miss Trudy (human), she made me promise I would take care of her cats if something happened to her. I've actually already made the same request from our children. I sort of feel like I better outlive the rescues and my children though.
At the time of this request she was 96. I somewhat reluctantly, I'm afraid, said okay. Then, because she was 96 and things really do happen to 96 year olds quite frequently, something happened to her. She died.
I talked to her caregivers and they said they would take care of the two cats. They didn't. They took care of one of them, and let the terribly frightened Trudy the cat run out of the house and go under it in pure cat terror, of which Miss Trudy had aplenty always.
My wife Mary went over to the house and she, with some help, got Trudy out of there and into our home.
Miss Trudy (we added the Miss at somepoint I guess because I called the human one that) was of an unknown age, but what was known was she didn't like me at all (showing remarkable taste for a cat, I thought). In fact, she didn't like other animals, or, well, air. But I think I held a special place in her heart. She hated me with a hiss and a spat. She chose, for a while to live in one of the bathrooms of our house we lived in in Lacombe. When we moved to a parsonage, she lived under beds, coming out to eat and rink water and hiss at me just to stabilize things on occasion. One of our daughters called her the "devil cat." But, like many I've come across in the past decade, she was much more lost than evil.
See, truthfully, she wasn't a bad cat. More a frightened one. More missing the human master she had grown up with and never understood what happened to her. I felt passion for her seeming loneliness.
She grew to love Mary thought, because, well, everyone loves Mary. When we moved to Eunice, she went with us in a carrier after we had to chase her around the parsonage, terrifying her, angering her even more.
Ageless. Friendless (except for Mary, who is broken up about her -- as she has been about every rescue we've made who passed into another life). She is even hissless for she no longer has the strength.
I really pray that this means what it says it means...
And EVERY creature which is IN HEAVEN, and on earth, and under the earth and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying blessing and honor and glory and power be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever.
And I pray that Miss Trudy and Miss Trudy be re-united, and Miss Trudy's angelic soprano call h er to her, and Miss Trudy the cat will be free at last.
We tried Miss Trudy. We tried. Maybe we couldn't save her in the end, but we gave her three or four more years than she would have had.
What a week in which to grow I've had.
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