I thought of Frannie asleep on the porch, dead quiet but drowning out the sound of the other cats. I heard her dreaming that she was racing through the woods- alone in the world, but not for long. The ice crunched beneath her feet. Snow hissed in the air and flecked her fur. She ran in that unhurried but determined feline fashion with erect body, stiffly trailing tail, and legs flickering like the frames of a silent movie. The wind flattened the fur on her face. A cat on a mission, she moved to the rhythm of her breathing, ignoring the honk of a diesel horn and my rubbernecking wife's blue car grinding to a halt on the shoulder of the road. Squirrels, cows, coyotes, ferrets, minks, lemurs, hognosed snakes, flying fox bats dispersed as her claws tore up the ground. She scattered her past into atoms as she ran. With the strength of a thousand beating hearts she was charging toward us and toward her happiness.

Then and Now