LETTERS FROM HOME: BRIDGING THE GUL BETWEEN CAPE GIRARDEAU AND KATHMANDU

Aug. 28, 1997

Dear Julie,

We've had a bit of a New England August in Missouri this year. Some nights when the AC was replaced by a light blanket, and mornings of heavy dew. It's too early to speak of winter, of course, but fall seems to be about. The university's first football game is this weekend, and the region's harvest will be on display at the Southeast Missouri District Fair in a few weeks.

Hank and Lucy are friskier than they've been in awhile. A few weeks back we were worried because one of them got sick. If you'll pardon the indelicacy, something red and stringy appeared in some vomitus.

We stood in the backyard carefully watching them roam about. Then we brought them upstairs into the bedroom and watched them some more.

I was prepared to call the vet and do penance for giving them the rib bones DC had smuggled out of a buffet restaurant. But DC, the family scientist, examined the evidence. The dog was sick all right. Sick from eating DC's petunias. What a relief.

Last night as we were returning home from a late movie, I drove over the crest of the Independence Street hill and saw something move in the road. I stopped and there in the headlights was a lovely black and white cat that had just been hit by a car. When we got out of the van we could see her head was smashed though her body was twitching.

When the cat stopped moving for about 15 seconds we thought it had died, but then she mightily arched her back backward and stretched her legs in the way cats often do when they get up to leave. And we knew she had.

I drove home for a shovel while DC waited with the cat in the street, turning cars into the other lane and bending over the cat, telling her how good she was so her last thoughts would be good ones.

When I returned, DC picked up the collarless body and laid it on the grass beside the street, curled as if sleeping. We hoped her owners would find her there, horrified but at least aware that someone had attended the death.

Late in the '70s, a girlfriend asked me to keep her cat, Frijoles, while she took a long overland journey to Kathmandu. Frijoles and I weren't exactly pals but I was the only option. Besides, I liked the way she skittered over the sidewalk behind me on my midnight jogs, and the way she woke me up by nibbling on my nose.

But I'd never had a pet of my own before and did not care for Frijoles well, forgot to clean her cat box and paid too little attention to her. Eventually Frijoles disappeared.

I didn't know if she'd been killed by a car or simply ran away. I stopped writing to the girlfriend because she'd expect some mention of her beloved cat.

Months went by before I received a miffed letter announcing her arrival date. I panicked, put the word out every way I could think of for any sign of a tabby with a sidelong gait.

Soon Dr. H.O. Graul, a retired and beloved English professor who lived across the street, appeared at my door cradling Frijoles. She was now Norma, the name he'd given her when they'd adopted each other months before.

He loved her, I saw, and could not hide that truth of his heartbreak as he handed over his cat. At that moment, I saw the many ways that the gulf between Dr. Graul's compassion and mine stretched from Cape Girardeau to Kathmandu.

Dr. Graul is gone now, Frijoles too. But when I walk in the back door to kneel happily on the floor between the petunia-eaters, I have both of them to thank.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.