Samantha, 1992-2007

My love of animals started at a very young age. When I was in kindergarten, I got my cat Samantha. My mom's friend's neighbor always had a lot of cats because she loved them, and took in every one that she found. Because she did this, she always had more cats than she could handle and was always looking for good homes for them. I still remember the day that we went to her house to get Samantha, and her brother Leo. I was so excited when we brought them home. We kept them inside for the first week while they got used to us so that they wouldn't run away when they were free. Soon after we let them out, Leo disappeared and we never saw him again, but Samantha stuck around. Pretty soon after, she had her first kittens. All four of them were beautiful, and I wanted to keep them all. When they were about eight weeks old, they all disappeared one day. I believe someone took them, because that's not uncommon in my community. Samantha had kittens 3 more times, and she had 4 each time, making a total of 16 kittens throughout her life. We kept several of them, but all of them ran away over time. Samantha was the only one that stayed. Last weekend when I went home, my mother told me that Samantha was missing. Because of her advanced age, I immediately assumed the worst, but since we couldn't find her body, my mother held on to hope that she'd come back. This afternoon, my mom called me and told me that my brothers had found Samantha in the pasture, and that she had passed away. My family buried her in the pet cemetary in our back yard. I'm handling this much better than I expected, but I still miss her.