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The Cat Lady We first saw her about four years ago. The little car would pull up opposite the abandoned flats, and she would take the day's food in under the Moreton Bays for her cats. Cats can tell the time well. If we came home at ten to four, and stopped briefly at the flats, four or five cats would appear from the undergrowth!
Later, she walked, plodding past each afternoon at four p.m. You really could set your clock by her. For two years she dragged her vinyl clad shopping cart past us, ignoring us. Any hullo was ignored, though sometimes she would glance grimly at us as she passed. She only talked to her cats under the big figs at the flats.
The cats flourished. "Blue," and the big grey one, in particular, always had me suspicious that they were two-timing her and their owners. They were a clique. We would see Andrew's cat from next door wander on down in the last months, and there was a big black tom who would skirt down the rear of the Lutheran tennis court. But these blokes were interlopers, and always had to be cautious.
In the last year we became friends. Our corgi was tied up to the water metre while we were picking clover out of the lawn. She spoke to him and finally, to us. We found we had given some of the cats the right names, and were corrected about the others.
Besides the corgi, there were other reasons to talk. The developers had moved in on the last block of the flats. The figs were shut off with security fencing. The cat lady asked if she could go in to feed the cats. "They won't let me." We all wondered what would happen to the cats.
She shifted her feeding station across the road into a vacant block. Several foam meat trays formed a table under a splintered old tree. We got to know the cats well then. The moth-eaten old
chocolaty black one often spent the day under the tree, sprawled at ease in his kitchen. "Blue" would solemnly regard us as we passed; sometimes we were rewarded with a meow. Occasionally people would sneak down from our house with a
handful of food, strictly forbidden to bring anyone back with them.
The older cats seemed slowly to disappear as the building progressed. It took a little while to notice, because in the garden shrubbery next to the vacant block were four beautiful tabby kittens. They and the cat lady adopted each other with enthusiasm, and our house constantly swapped stories of the latest antics we'd seen on the way home, or walking the dogs. More edicts were issued about "no more pets!"
The day after the surveyor's pegs appeared on the vacant block, someone cut down all the trees except for a big jacaranda. The cat lady set up some more feed trays under that, dug into the ground, with
scraps of batten for support. A few days later, I saw one of the half grown kittens dead next to the table as I walked to the train. In the evening, there was a small mound, with a couple of branches, and a covering of twigs over it.
The flats are almost ready for the new tenants- the bark chips are down in the gardens. The shrubbery across from the vacant block is now occupied by a half grown handsome silver fellow who looks a lot like the house pet opposite the TAFE. But the cat lady is gone.
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