I am still haunted by the memory of a cat that adopted us.

We kids were in upper grades of grade school when this happened. Of course, it's hard to say who adopted whom.

My older sibling, with classmates, happened upon this kitten, lurking by itself around a filling station. Tiny kitten with a horribly bloated belly. Turned out to be female. The kitten was carried to our house to be fed.

She was mostly black, and never did get very big, although in time she matured to adulthood; since she was inclined to remain with us, we had her spayed and doctored.

The thing is, I never called her by name. Maybe the others in the house had named her, but I never did. It's just that this little black cat and I were so close. We had some kind of telepathic psychic thing going on. We would look at each other across the room and pay silent attention to what we saw in the other's eyes.

The silence is also critical here. This was a cat that made very little sound. Well, once she got underfoot, and my foot came down with my full weight on her flexible little person, and THEN, by God, she let out the heartiest miaow I could hope for. Otherwise, she never went around mewing, ever. She could make that funny little chirruping noise that reminds one of a birdcall. A very sensitive, alert, communicative animal she was, but she simply would not vocalize except as a last resort.

When I called the cats for feeding-time from the garage door, I always said "kitty kitty" anyway so names were not that big a deal.

Even the purring was different. More tactile vibration than sound, a very low-volume purring. With this cat one always had a sense of still waters running deep.

I was away at university, when a neighbor brought home a watchdog that I never got acquainted with; the watchdog wasn't there very long. No lead or fence, the dog was at large when outdoors. Before the watchdog was evicted in disgrace, it managed to slaughter both of our cats, stalking the garage door when the cats came out of the house.

That's the last pet cat I ever had.