Sam's Story - by Joel Schmid

A Guardian Angel Chapter 13 - Sam's Story

 

Sam, watching me drive away... every morning...

  

…Who remembers Sam from Short street ? Janine had been feeding this cheerful boy for years before he suddenly disappeared. Fearing the worst, all turned out well - for fate had other plans for little Sam …

  

Sam was tired.

He was tired of living on the street, tired of being cold in the winter and wet in the spring. Tired of being hungry but most of all he was tired of being alone. He was a very gregarious male, and although he chased away other males from his territory in the abandoned lot on Short street (he couldn’t help it - it was instinct) he craved company. Any kind of company - even from a human. That was why he always looked forward to the daily early morning visits from the human female in the grumbly old car. Of course it didn’t hurt that she always brought fresh cat food with her each morning, or that she always had a few kind human sounds for him (he didn’t understand a bit of human, but her tone was soft and comforting).

So after a few years of living this homeless life in the shadows of the close set city houses, Sam finally decided to do something about it. He had made many advances to the human female who came each morning, but although she sounded sympathetic, she had only brought him to her home once, and after a visit to a strange building with lots of other animals coming and going she had brought him right back here to Short street the next day. He looked at her with puzzlement as she opened the humans plastic and wire cage to let him out, but he had been a little scared at the time so he didn’t hesitate and scampered out of the cage and around the back of the garage near the empty lot. Later he had scolded himself a little that he had not tried harder to convince her to let him stay with her, but it was too late to do anything about it then.

But today he could smell the coming of another hard winter, and along with it the hardships all stray cats faced in the form of frozen paws, painful kernels of ice between their toe pads, and the gnawing bite of hunger. He decided that he would have to try and find a human that was willing to make him part of their colony. He knew it was risky - he'd had run-ins with bad humans before. Some of them were like rats - shifty eyed and unpredictable, tearing up the shelters he and his fellows relied on to protect them from the rain and snow. But he knew there were good ones too - just like the female who came to feed them each morning, and replaced the shelters the bad ones took away.

Sam waited until the human female made her usual stop, ate his fill from the delicious pile of wet food she left on the paper plates inside the shelter, then struck out down Short street to try and find a human that would take him in. He had no idea how to do it - since he didn't speak a word of human and he was pretty sure humans could not speak cat - but he was determined to try. He did know how to approach a human with caution, and he knew that hissing or growling would frighten them and make them either back away or attack him - not much different than another cat. So he would watch and wait until he found one that looked friendly, and then speak to them in his most urgent and pleading meow. Hopefully that would work well enough to get him close. He would then have to take the risk of letting the human touch him, allow them to stroke his soft fur long enough for him to get a good smell of them. A cat could smell the difference between acceptance and rejection from any animal. Even the smelly skunks that sometimes shared the food and shelters with cats had a different scent when they were alarmed by something or were just stopping by for a casual meal.

He made his way slowly down Short Street to North Goodman, darting in and out of the cover provided by the dark hulks of the houses, garages, and shadowy alleyways between them. It was still early yet, and it would most likely be a while before many humans were walking around for him to evaluate. He met a few street cats along the way however, and said hello to the ones he knew, and avoided the ones he did not. Now was not the time to get in a territory tiff with another cat. He didn’t want to waste time or risk injury defending himself. Luckily the few strangers he saw did not try to approach him - they just stared at him with steely eyes for a moment before resuming whatever patrol route they were padding along in.

Eventually he made it onto North Goodman, where there was a lot more human cars speeding along the roadway, as well as humans walking along the sidewalk at a brisk pace. He only needed to glance at their faces to tell they were preoccupied with human business and would not even be willing to look in his direction let alone stop and let him talk to them. He found a nice dark alleyway between two houses with a small soft pile of old wrinkled newspapers to sit on and waited for a while. He sniffed the air that wafted along out on the sidewalk, marveling at the myriad of scents from human food, car smoke (exhaust) steam from the humans sewers, dog and rat pee, and many others he could not identify. He entertained himself for a while trying to guess where some of the strange scents might have originated from, when he spotted an approaching human male that looked like a good prospect. This one was not hurrying along, and was taking his time and looking around him. He had a kind face, and did not seem to be full of busy self-assurance or sour indifference that some humans seem to project. Sam rose up off his haunches and swished his tail back and forth, steeling himself to emerge from the alley as soon as the human male got close enough…

To be continued …