My honey found the picture for me!

He searched through all the CD’s until it finally surfaced and here it is.

I had walked by her quite a few times that day without noticing her because of her coloring. It wasn’t until I saw her tail curling out making me think it was a snake (not unheard of in this house unfortunately! ) that I took notice of her. So cute!

When I had my previous diary describing the antics of our family, alot of readers kept telling me that I should turn it into a book. I still have all the entries printed out and I may still do it, and if I do, it will be entitled "We Didn’t Mean To Be The Neighbors From Hell…" But it just couldn’t be helped with all those crazy teenagers and a 70 pound overprotective Rottie/Chow thrown into the mix! 

The only family member we didn’t have to worry about was Alley Cat. She was not a ‘team player’ and was even what I would call ‘semi-feral’. She lived outside 90% of the time, coming in only when it was cold and the younger boys weren’t here. We fed her outside and never even had a litter box for her until the last couple of years. Alley was funny though. Once the boys showed up, she wouldn’t come inside at all. Even after they left at the end of summer, she would sniff at the door and it was as if she could still catch their scents, so she would just turn around and it would be close to a month before she would hesitantly venture in, always ready to race out if they were still here! Jeez!

Time passed and all the kids moved out and Jasmine got too old to be any kind of a threat to anyone. So when we got new neighbors right next door, we thought we were in the clear! They would have no reason to wish we weren’t here! LOL! One day a couple of weeks after they moved in, we were talking to them from our front porch asking how they were adjusting.

They said everything was great, except the wife told us about another cat that would rudely go right up on their deck and torment their two cats through the glass slider. The husband thought it was hilarious because one of their cats would go ‘ballistic’ nearly giving himself a concussion trying to through the glass of the slider to get to this other cat. I had that old familiar feeling of dread coming over me when finally it happened…she asked "Do you know which family around here has a tabby cat?"

Yup, that was it. It was my own fault though, thinking I was free and clear when I know damn well it is my aura or something that guarantees I will never have a Donna Reed kinda life! There was nothing else to do but pick up the sleeping cat at my feet and ask "You mean this one?"

There was a moment of silence then thankfully lots of laughter and apologies from both sides, them saying it’s no big deal and us for having such a rude cat.

Ok, I guess if that’s the worst Alley Cat ever did, that just makes us the neighbors from heck instead of hell! LOL! She was a quirky cat and lived her life on her own terms and we let her do that so she had a good life. She was just another crazy member of this family and she will be missed very very much.

                            Alley Cat
             May 1991 – January 21, 2008