“Hey, come look in the carport. You have a visitor – it’s a new cat I don’t recognize, and it’s sitting next to the food bowls. Come see if this cat is one of your regulars at the Cat Cafe,” Pretty laughed as she called to me from the kitchen one morning this week. “Sheila’s Cat Cafe. Come on down. Everyone’s welcome.” Pretty continued chuckling to herself as I walked through the kitchen to peep through the back door. Hahaha, I thought. Very funny.
Hm. Nope…definitely not a cat I knew.
“Well,” I turned to Pretty. “I will not feed this cat. This cat wasn’t one of Carport Kitty’s friends. You realize the only reason I fed the other two cats is because they came to pay their respects after CPK passed. I refuse to become the old lesbian cat lady that lives on Cardinal.”
Pretty shook her head and said with measured mirth, “That ship sailed months ago. It is what it is, Naynay. Seems to me we need to call our carport feeding bowls Sheila’s Cat Cafe.”
Somehow that both annoyed and made me smile, too. I mulled things over. “Okay, okay. But let’s call it the Cardinal Cat Cafe. I like the alliteration better.” And therein lay the beginning of the next cat saga which now included a third unnamed cat who felt a menu of Meow Mix as an entree plus Temptations for dessert was delightful.
Sheila Morris is a personal historian, essayist with humorist tendencies, lesbian activist, truth seeker and speaker in the tradition of other female Texas storytellers including her paternal grandmother.
In December, 2017, the University of South Carolina Press published her collection of first-person accounts of a few of the people primarily responsible for the development of LGBTQ organizations in South Carolina. Southern Perspectives on the Queer Movement: Committed to Home will resonate with everyone interested in LGBTQ history in the South during the tumultuous times from the AIDS pandemic to marriage equality.
She has published five nonfiction books including two memoirs, an essay compilation and two collections of her favorite blogs from I'll Call It Like I See It. Her first book, Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing received a Golden Crown Literary Society Award in 2008. Her writings have been included in various anthologies - most recently the 2017 Saints and Sinners Literary Magazine. Her latest book, Four Ticket Ride, was released in January, 2019.
She is a displaced Texan living in South Carolina with her wife Teresa Williams and their dogs Spike, Charly and Carl. She is also Naynay to her two granddaughters Ella and Molly James who light up her life for real. Born in rural Grimes County, Texas in 1946 her Texas roots still run wide and deep.
What’s new pussycat? Lah la,la, la,la lah!
What’s one more?!
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Hahaha, Ann! You and Pretty always look at life from both sides now!! You made me laugh this morning!
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Catastic! I love them and you! Thank you for feeding them.
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I love you, too, Cindy – and your love of the birds! Thank you for what you do on every front.
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You can’t stop this now. The cat telegraph is well and truly working π
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No breakdown there! Maybe aviation folks could use their help!
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One cat always leads to another. ’tis in the nature of the beast.
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Good one, Josie! Too true!
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I love that you’re doing this, you’re a kind soul π
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Thanks very much, June – but you better check with Pretty on the kind soul. π
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π
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