By Judith Roberts
Her name was Apollo.
My father gifted her to me 13 years ago, right after we moved into a house in the Barnett Springs neighborhood. She was to be an outdoor cat, as I am allergic to cats, and she was the best cat anyone could ask for.
She was always incredibly friendly, wanting pets and cuddles and staying in the house during the really cold nights. She got along well with our Chihuahua and tolerated our Corgi.
She was originally classified as a “barn cat,” one that took care of little vermin around the house, but she was so much more. My older daughter taught her to claw the screen windows when she was hungry (much to my chagrin), and my younger daughter would sneak her in the house at night to sleep in the bed with her.
When we moved, my husband was so worried that Apollo wouldn’t come with us. She hated cars, and one of our original attempts to move her to our new home had already gone poorly. But, on the last day that we owned our old house, we managed to get her in a pet carrier in the car and take her to her new home. She was angry about the car ride and not super thrilled about the new surroundings; she hid out in the woods for about three days, just meow-ling angrily at us from the bushes. But she eventually came along and found out that her new territory was quite more interesting.
In the last few years, we joked that she had “retired” from her outdoor job of catching vermin, and it did seem like she didn’t care about wild prey anymore. She would sneak in the house as much as she could, curl up on the dog’s bed (or my daughter’s, if she could), and sleep peacefully in the quiet indoors. She was slowly becoming a house cat, though she wanted to be out of doors about as much as she wanted to be inside – especially when my husband was grilling. One of the kids’ favorite memories is when Kyle was putting hamburgers on the grill and looked back to grab the last one and couldn’t find it. He looked everywhere for that patty, but the cat had already swiped it off the tray and taken it off to eat it. She may have “retired,” but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t quick to grab some meat!
And, alas, as happens to all good pets, life ends. Last week, Apollo disappeared, and we were all devastated. She was a delight to our family, but over the summer, she had gotten slower and leaner. We think she found herself a quiet, wooded area to drift off to sleep.
This is the second and final of our family pets that have been with the children since they were born to pass. And just because she was an outdoor pet didn’t mean she was loved any less. We mourn that sweet little cat with so many family memories – of my father giving her to me, of her purring around both of my daughters, of her hiding out in the house in any cozy spot, of stealing food and asking for more.
She was loved. She was Apollo, queen among cats.
