Black Magic's Legacy: Memorial to an Extraordinary Cat

Sweet Revenge on a Cat Hater

When AC offered writers a selection of "avatars" to substitute for the photos some of us add to our by-lines, I chose the cat image you see above. I wrote a short memoir [http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/431721/i_love_my_new_ac_avatar.html] describing Black Magic, a wonderful mixed-breed cat who had a mostly black coat and amber eyes as shown in the picture. I closed by saying that the story of Magic, her various foster kittens, and their various pet possums, could go on and on. Someone expressed a wish that it would go on.

Well, I'll spare you the natter about the conversations in which Magic seemed to understand words a cat could hardly be expected to understand...not because I'm all that reluctant to speculate about what really goes on in cats' minds, but because I am reluctant to quote from private conversations. This is the sequel, the story about the long-term effects Magic and her family had on my family and me.

Magic's own individual story ended abruptly and tragically, while she was only an early-middle-aged cat. I had a neighbor who was very unpopular in the neighborhood. Maybe he developed a grudge against me or a hatred of cats as an early symptom of whatever he died of, a few years later; I don't know. Anyway, after years of non-violence, he shot one of Magic's foster kittens.

Magic showed grief by becoming very clingy, hardly leaving me when I was outside and hanging around under the window when I was inside. The current possum also showed grief by sitting in the road and growling at everybody, including motor vehicles, who passed by in the direction of danger. When one of the farm trucks that can get up and down my road put the possum out of his misery, Magic clearly recognized his body, not as ordinary roadkill, but as the remains of a friend; she cried and leaped up into my arms when we passed the scene.