She...

Dedicated to my late grandfather who kept a book of my childhood writing:


She had the biggest heart. Her emerald green eyes sparkled like the sun. She had short fuzzy caramel brown hair but her paws were snow white. She was the most beautiful of all cats.

She lived in the neighborhood park. Everyone absolutely loved her whether the park visitors or fellow cats, dogs and even squirrels. She would rub on visitor's legs, walk elegantly past them while meowing a simple welcome to my park meow, she was gentle to children and never approached when she sensed their fear. She also helped other animals find food and would always help clean the park from insects by graciously feeding on them. She was everyone's friend. All the kids would beg their mommies to take them on the weekend to visit her.  Each child had a different name for her and she would always respond lovingly to each child's call. You could consider her sort of like a neighborhood pet.

She was also extremely sociable and had an extensive social life. She made friends with all the house pets. Her life was not solely bound inside the park. She would make occasional visits along the street visiting her pet friends, meowing her hellos to everyone. She would also officially welcome any new pets with a welcome to our neighborhood gift dragged all the way between her tiny teeth from the park's trash bins that she would ALWAYS pick by herself.

She was also very popular among guy cats, and what cat in his normal mind would not be attracted to that feminine strut of hers? Her sleek figure always sparked the jealousy of other female cats on the block. Everyone either wanted her or wanted to be her. She was the perfect feline.

She would often run around the area to make sure everything was ok and that no house pets were having any feuds with one another. She always functioned as the neighborhood's peace maker. She would make sure there's no trash lying around or mice hiding in people's gardens. Even though she would never attack a mouse in her life but she would nicely ask them to leave her neighborhood because she wasn't sure other cats were as compassionate as she was. They almost always took her advice.

But one day something terrible happened. As she took her regular stroll down the street she stepped on something hard and sharp. Someone left broken shards of glass on the ground. The pain in her paws was agonizing as the glass pierced through one of them and hurt the others. She could barely walk back to the park and blood was streaming everywhere from her wound.

She decided to cross the street and lay down till one of the neighbors sees her. Someone was bound to walk outside to do something and they would find her and help her. They all loved her so much they would do anything to save her. But as she began to slowly hop on threes the pain was more than she could bear. She tried meowing real loud in attempts to grab any attention yet there was no use as it was night time and probably everyone was asleep. No one seemed to hear her so she continued to hop trying to ignore the pain.

As she attempted to cross the street she made it half way through by forcefully dragging herself to the other side, a car came speeding down the street. She knew she would never be able to reach either sides on time with all her wounds. She knew what was about to happen so she took one last look at the neighborhood she had called home since she was a little playful kitten but her sight was blinded by the stream of tears falling from her eyes and glistening her cheeks. She prayed she would not feel the pain.

The next day the neighborhood woke up to the saddest news they could imagine. A man who was up early to throw out the trash and to leave her the daily plate of milk she always drank, found her lying there in the middle of the street. The person who hit her never bothered to look back and see what he or she has done.

The neighbors decided to bury her in the park, after all it was her home and it was where everyone loved to see her. The burial was heartbreaking. It was a scene from a fairytale gone bad. Humans, cats, dogs, squirrels, birds and mice were all gathered to pay their respect to the creature that only brought happiness, joy and understanding to the lives of whomever she touched. The park would never be the same without her. Mothers didn't know what to tell their kids. Cats no longer wanted to play out in the streets, dogs were not sure they wanted to hang out in the park anymore and mice had to pack up and leave as their protector was gone. Her absence crushed them all.

The park changed forever with her absence, never to become the same.