1977

Lost Cat

This is what Katleen looked like although it is my second white cat Tute

There was one really sad aspect of me going to the races, I lost my cat Kathleen.  Kathleen was an indoor-outdoor cat and after a few weeks of keeping him cooped up in the house I started to let him go outside.  When I lived on the farm in Micanopy I didn’t worry about him going out, the nearest neighbor was a half mile away, there were no other cats around, and the house was surrounded by several acres of cow pasture so there wasn’t much place for him to go so he pretty much stayed around the house and the barn.   My house in Indialantic was one of many in the neighborhood so I was worried about letting him out but cats can be persistent and so I started letting him out.  At first I would leave the sliding door from my bedroom to the atrium open a few inches and he would go out into the atrium but of course he wanted more that that so I left the door from the atrium to the garage open and he got familiar with the garage then I would leave the garage door open about six inches at the bottom and he finally got to go out into the world.  The first week or so I would go out with him while he explored the front yard and then around the house but would make he returned with me when I went back inside.   Kathleen like to play chase the rocks.  I would get small rocks and toss them on the driveway and he would chase after them and bat them around before stopping and wait for me to toss another one.  Before long I would just let him go out by himself and most of the time he would come in late in the night and lay next to me on the bed but there were times he would stay out all night but would always be back in my morning for breakfast.    Two days before the race Kathleen came home with scratches across his face, head and ears probably from a fight with another cat.   The day before the race one of the scratches had got infected and was swollen so I squeezed the puss out of it, swabbed it with peroxide and he seemed to be doing better but I still let him go out the night before the race, a decision I would regret.   The day of the race Kathleen hadn’t returned home in the morning so after breakfast I went out and walked around the house but couldn’t find him.  When John arrived at nine in the morning to go to Daytona, Kathleen still hadn’t come home and I expanded my search around the neighboring houses but to no avail.  Thinking he would come home later, I left the garaged door open a few inches, the atrium door to the bedroom open and left plenty of food for him and then we left to go to Daytona.

When we got back home the first thing I did was go inside the house and look for Kathleen, he wasn’t there.  Some of his food had been eaten so he had been home but wasn’t there.  After John left, I walked around the neighborhood, looking for him and asking the surrounding neighbor’s if they had seen him.  No one had.  I continued looking for him the following week to no avail.  Kathleen was gone.  I felt really bad about it, leaving him when he was injured, letting him go outside that night before I left, I was sad, I missed him terribly.