My Florida
By Melody Murphy [melody@ocalasgoodlife.com]
The Ballad Of Shadowsox, Third Verse
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020 is over, thank God, but there are two more tales of last year’s mayhem to share. For those new to the saga, here’s a recap: November 2019: Stray cat manifests under my parents’ house in Georgia. Mother is emphatically not a cat person. Cat is sweet, beguiles humans with wily ways. After spirited dissent, cat acquires hybrid name out of spite, is allowed to live outdoors on 10 wooded acres. It’s just a matter of time. April 2020: Shadowsox shows up with gouged hindquarters. Vet says owl talons. Mother changes policy with breathtaking speed. Shadowsox becomes indoor cat. May 2020: Parents have purchased house in Florida. I keep the cat while they’re down for the closing. My mother brings a leash. “Just put it on him if you take him outside,” she says. I know leashing a cat is unusual, but I assume from such blithe instruction that the cat had been successfully introduced to his leash. Never assume. There was a full moon that night, in one of spring’s last cold spells. My friend Laura and I were sitting on my patio. Through the kitchen window, we could hear the plaintive mewing of Shadowsox. He was lonesome. “Let’s put him on his leash so he can sit out here with us,” said Laura. We should have known. No matter how plaintively he asks, a freshly traumatized, recently relocated, newly leashed cat whose last night in the great outdoors ended with an owl attack has no business outside after dark in an owl-haunted neighborhood. Especially when there is a full moon. Shadowsox balked when we put the leash on him. He was tense when I carried him outside. And when the full moon dazzled him with madness, it was like trying to
The full moon dazzled Shadowsox with madness. It was like trying to hold an electric eel.
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OCALA’S GOOD LIFE retirement redefined
hold an electric eel. He became a writhing frenzy, performed a spectacular leap out of my arms, dashed across the yard, and dove into a dense clump of shrubbery. It took us half an hour to find him. There was no sound in his fury. Laura shone her headlights into the bushes, and I climbed into the tangle of vines with a flashlight, trying not to think about snakes. We heard the faint jingle of his collar-bell, then a tiny outraged meow. A pair of wild green eyes gleamed under a palmetto. I grabbed his leash. When I had him, I climbed out, clutching him tightly. But not tightly enough. Halfway across the yard, another jolt of moonlight madness struck him. This time it was like demons had possessed a bar of soap. He contorted his head out of his collar, did a triple axel with a twist, and disappeared into the darkness. Rid of his bell, the cat was completely silent now. We searched for him until 1:30 in the morning. By now it was 49 degrees. We were shivering and I was distraught. The search resumed at sunrise. Left to his own devices, we had hoped he would calm himself and materialize, looking for food. He did not. We cruised the neighborhood. No Shadowsox. Then Laura had a brilliant idea. Standing in the backyard, she looked across the street at the wide bars of the cemetery gates. “Maybe he ran over there,” she said, “and hid under the office.” It did look very much like where he first materialized in Georgia. Off she went to leave my phone number with the staff and tell them to be on the lookout for a grey cat with a shaved behind. So what’s next? In the next issue, you’ll hear the end of the story: how the cat went AWOL not once but twice. Sometimes we repeat a verse to end a song. Which is exactly what this ballad’s namesake did. Because 2020 was a wretched year... even for cats.
