Patch and Friend(Dawg)




This is Patch. Patch came to us one day a couple of years ago. He might have been dropped off or run away from his prior home. We never found out. When we would go out and bring in our other ten cats at night, we would see Patch lying under one of our cars just staring at us. You really couldn't get close to him or he would run off. Mike would set out little bowls of cat food each evening and by morning the food would be gone. This went on for a couple of months and one evening Patch decided to join the family and ran inside through the open door as we were gathering the rest of the cats for the evening. He made himself at home and never left again until the morning of January 13, 2005. Mike opened the cat door in office to let out all the cats at about 6:00AM. It was still dark and by 6:15 AM Patch walked across the road in front of an on coming car and was hit and killed. The driver never stopped. At 7:30 AM, our daughter, who lives next door, called us and said Patch was lying in the road. We buried him that morning between two huge pine trees on the property.

Patch was always an independent sort of fellow. He liked people and loved being outside but he never warmed up to the other cats. He preferred to stay outside except when it was unusually cold, then he would come in and stake out the backs of one of the chairs or lay in front of the fireplace with Dawg, our old chocolate Lab. He never minded the dogs but sure didn't like the other cats. He was a character as well. When Mike was on the computer in the morning, Patch would sit on the desk carefully hooking one sharp claw in Mike's slevve until breakfast was ready. When he was hungry which was most of time he wanted his meal and he wanted it now. As protective as we are about our animals, we couldn't know or even guess that he would go in the street. Our road has literally about ten cars a day pass by and we never thought this might happen. We miss Patch and sometimes we both think he is still with us. Maybe he is but we can't see him, we can only feel his presence.

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