Inside Cat

Bella was one of three feral kittens that were living under our house when we bought it. At first both their parents lived with them and kept us away from the babies, but once the kittens were old enough to be weaned mom and dad abandoned them to us. They were completely wild, but with a lot of patience and a lot of tuna we managed to tame and adopt all three. Note the insanely cute picture of baby Bella at right - can you blame us for keeping her? Bella never wanted to give up too much of her independence, and was never comfortable spending more than 4 or 5 hours at a time inside the house with us before her accident. Now that she's an inside cat for the rest of her life, Bella wanted to reflect on some of the things about the outside world that she will miss the most...

1. Sleeping in my vegetable garden. Nothing keeps a cat cool on a hot South Carolina summer day like sleeping in the middle of a thick tomato patch!

2. Chasing her sister Clementine around the yard, doing all manner of flips and crazy kung-fu cat fight moves.

3. Hunting, maiming, and killing! Our husband and I are practically on a first name basis with the staff at our local wildlife rescue organization. They officially dubbed Bella and her siblings "a menace to wildlife" this summer after we brought in an adolescent dove we rescued from them.

4. Taking dirt baths in the driveway.

5. Sitting on the roof of our gardening shed, and also the roof of the house next door.

6. Drinking out of mud puddles.

7. Taunting Coney, the dachshund who lives next door to us. Wait a minute...a dachshund couldn't snap a cat's leg in two, could it???

8. Lying under a tree, hoping a squirrel might fall out of it and into her clutches.

Bella and her brother Neko, doing some late summer gardening