Page 24 - Animal Kin

During our dinner around the table on the deck, she would hop around and peck at ants on the windowsill and every so often, steal something off our plates.
But she was often off exploring the neighborhood. The first night that she didn’t come home, I slept uneasily. I got up at dawn and walked several blocks calling “Kitty-Kitty” at any Blue jay I saw and up into the trees in general. Some of the birds looked at me but none flew down to me. Several hours later she was on the back deck calling for me.
One morning I heard her screeching from out front while I was still in bed. At this point I was used to her being gone for the night and expected her to show up for mealworms and cat food for breakfast. But she had never screamed
for it before. I went down and called her from the back door and she flew around to get her food. Soon she was out front screeching again. A few times over the next hour I won- dered why she was making such a racket and when I finally stepped out to get the newspaper, I saw her sitting on top of the cage of young canaries that I had hanging on the front porch. I thought she must be scaring the canaries and went over to shoo her away. To my horror, in the cage was a large, very full Black snake. It had eaten all my canaries and Kitty-Kitty had tried to let me know.