"A chance encounter - Nothing more
Touching me like a soft breeze ..."
~ Charles Croes ~ Soft Breeze

Mid-November 2001 I was outside with a couple of our patio ferals. The free-feeding dish for them is right behind the chair I usually sit in at the patio table. I wasn't paying attention to any of the cats when I heard a loud hissing and spitting. Sylvester was the only one I missed when I looked up and realized one of the cats wasn't within my eyesight. I started scolding Syl about his angry hissing (which he seldom did) as I turned in the chair toward the feeding bowl.
There sat Sylvester minding his Ps and Qs, not hissing at all. He was staring angrily down at a hissing, scrawny black and white wad of fur backed into a corner. Such a cute kitten, but so terribly tiny and thin. I'd never seen this little one before and I figured the kit had to be around three-four months old. When I stood up to approach, that ball turned into thin legs that carried the body almost in a blur past me. My heart sank because I was certain I was seeing a female.
A few days later, as I was returning from running errands, I saw the same little black and white kitten running across the street about a half a block from our house. If there's one small kitten running around, I thought, there has to be another. All our males in the feral colony were neutered, so I prayed that if there were more kittens, please let them be all females until I could catch up with the recent vet bills of the last spay/neuters, testing, ear tipping, and vaccinations.
The next week I came in from more errands and had just removed my shoes when I heard the most pathetic mewing from the patio. The cry was unfamiliar, so I jumped back into my shoes and hurried outside. There was the little kitten again, still as skinny and just mewing and crying her little heart out. Without much of a scuffle, I managed to scruff her and throw the poor frightened baby into a carrier. I could feel her little nipples - they were pinked and very hard. I called Dr Steve, but he said there was no way they could possibly squeeze in another spaying that week. He told me to bring her on in, though, to make sure she was pregnant and to see how far along the pregnancy was, if indeed, she was.
That little girl didn't utter a sound the eight miles to the vet. She rode in the carrier as though she'd been doing it for years.
She was tiny - 2 pounds, 7 ounces. So very thin. Her little hipbones jutted sharply and were barely two inches across her rump. He guesstimated her at about four months. She had the signs of a very recent miscarriage. While he was still examining her, a tech poked her head into our room and said that there was a neuter cancellation for the following Tuesday. Dr Steve looked at me with that quirky eyebrow he gives as an unspoken question and I blurted out, "We'll be here at 8:30 on the dot!"
So I brought her home - still without a single peep from the carrier - and put her inside our home so she wouldn't be accessible to any toms should she go into heat before Tuesday morning. And that night the temp was to drop to 30 degrees. She was too thin, too young, too traumatized from her loss, to be wandering around in search of food and shelter in that weather.
She'd come out from under the bed in the guestroom a time or two in hopes of exploring, but our rude, unsociable crew were hissing and spitting as she tried to enter the hallway. She had drank plenty of water and ate and ate and ate some more. She was starving, but obviously she'd been around people as easily as I caught her without trapping. She'd done her duty in the litter box without any prompting from Craig and me. That is what broke our hearts. She'd been around people and those cretins had badly neglected and abused her.
She was truly a pretty little girl, with vivid pink paw pads and nose leather, snow-white and shiny black fur, and black-lined green eyes. I named her Breeze.
November 27th Breeze kept her spaying appointment. But she was NOT a four month old kitten. In fact, she was not a kitten, period. She was a full-grown cat, probably 18 months old.
Dr Steve thoroughly examined her that morning when I brought her in for spaying. He checked her teeth; she had all thirty – proof she wasn't a kitten. She also gained 6 ounces since the Tuesday when he weighed her before confirming that she wasn't pregnant. She weighed in at 2 pounds, 13 ounces. So tiny! Even he was shocked at her age because he was going by her size and what he could feel through her tummy. I had told Craig the first time that I'd seen her I thought she was about three or four months old.
Dr Steve also thought that Sylvester was her dad. Well, that had crossed my mind, but I'd ruled it out since he first thought she was about four months old – he'd hurriedly checked her out the previous week, and since we knew she was coming back the following week for spaying, he didn't check her teeth for an age. Because she was roughly eighteen months old, she was the missing kitten from our feral matriarch Teresa's next to last litter before I finally successfully trapped her. Teresa did have a little black and white kitten in that litter - that little cat was the first cat to disappear from our colony.
Breeze also had a white blaze on her nose as did Syl. Her green eyes were the exact same shade as Teresa's and her older male siblings, George and Rhett, from earlier litters of Teresa's. Dr Steve gave her a birth date of May 28, 2000, which would have been about right for Syl and Teresa to be her parents.
I pointed out some little lumps that I'd found on her left side - neck and shoulder - and asked if he could do a biopsy while she was out for the surgery. He checked them and said he would remove them - they aren't lumps, but buckshot. Her left side was riddled with shot pellets. I was so furious that I could've screamed. What obtuse individual lived near us that would shoot kittens and cats? When I picked her up that evening after surgery, he believed he got all the buckshot out of her - a total of NINE pellets.
Our little girl didn't even look like the same cat within a year - she'd filled out beautifully and became as sleek as can be. She stayed tiny all her life. Her max weight was five pounds, ten ounces.
She was such a graceful little cat. She appeared to daintily walk on her tippy-toes. She loved to be held and petted, brushed and combed, and absolutely adored our dogs, Princess, Penny, and Puglena.
Year round, her favorite resting area was on the mantle above the fireplace. She was the only cat in the house that managed to never move a single knick-knack while up there.
She didn't get into skirmishes with the others and always came at a run to greet Craig and me when we came home. She would give us her silent meows as she looked up into our faces with such an endearing expression. We couldn't help but drop everything and pick her up for a snuggle or two, no matter how tired or rushed we were. She was so attached to us that Craig called her "our wee Velcro kitty."
Year after year she would fly through her yearly check ups. When she turned eight, we started taking her in every six months because we firmly believe that cats and dogs should get extra check ups as humans do once they are considered seniors. She always had excellent blood work results and check ups.
The evening of November 27, 2011 when we went to clean litter boxes, provide fresh water and food, and give loads of scritches to the members of our clan in the cat house, we noticed that Breeze didn't greet us at the cat house door, something she always, always did. As Craig put down clean bowls for water and food, I went into the cat run to rake the pine straw and leaves that had fallen through the run's upper wire enclosure. Breeze Cat was at the far end of the run stretched out on her side. I went to awaken her, calling her name. She didn't move – she had gone to the Bridge sometime that day, for she was already cold and rigid. We were totally shocked and in complete dismay.
I couldn't help but press her against my chest and cry against her sweet little face. Her loss was so sudden and unexpected. She'd never been ill a day in her life. She passed away on the ninth anniversary of her spaying date. She was eleven years old, way too young to leave us.
As we had our Rainbow Bridge ceremony and buried her in our little back yard cemetery, Craig wiped the tears from his face and said he hoped we wouldn't have to bury another beloved little pet any time soon, that his heart couldn't take another loss. We had just lost precious fifteen year old Penny, our little Beagle, on October 30th. As it turned out, Breeze was the last one he did bury. I lost him March 9, 2012. Now the three of them – Craig, Penny, and Breeze - are together once more with all the other little ones we've lost.
Breeze – so aptly named – as a soft breeze, she entered our lives and just as softly left. ❤

Poem for Cats
And God asked the feline spirit,
"Are you ready to come home?"
"Oh, yes, quite so," replied the precious soul,
"And, as a cat, you know I am most able
To decide anything for myself."
"Are you coming then?" asked God.
"Soon," replied the whiskered angel,
"But I must come slowly
For my human friends are troubled
For you see, they need me, quite certainly."
"But don't they understand," asked God,
"That you'll never leave them?
That your souls are intertwined? For all eternity?
That nothing is created or destroyed?
It just is ... forever and ever and ever."
"Eventually they will understand,"
Replied the glorious cat,
"For I will whisper into their hearts
That I am always with them.
I just am ... forever and ever and ever."
~ Author Unknown ~