Friday the 13th wasn't unlucky for me, rather Monday, the 9th, when a motorist struck my dear Smoky, my trusty feline companion for nine years.
After 33 hours anguishing what happened to my "Smoky-woky," as I sometimes called her, I found her graceful, maimed kitty-body Wednesday night, Veterans' Day, outstretched at a corner of the pavement fronting the old Sunoco station on North Walnut. My beloved Smoky was dead.
Perhaps I tested the limits of raising indoor-outdoor kitties in the city, within a block of a busy thoroughfare. Both my nine-year-olds, Peppy and Smoky, were raised in my home and garden in Bloomington, born to a litter of five in May 2000 at Designscape's headquarters in Brown County.
Early on, I instilled a fear of cars in both of them, avoided gardening with them in front of my house so they wouldn't cross the street to chase a bird or chipmunk, and monitored their activities incessantly.
But after a stressful day at work that fateful Monday, then letting Smoky in and out of the back door at least three times and walking her downstairs for her supper while I fixed mine----our routine, and yet she often only nibbled or doted on my walking her downstairs----I later crashed in front of the tube in my Catnapper® lazy chair, Peppy in my lap, and let Smoky do her thing outside. That may have been my tragic, fatal error, but how much can a weary guy check on a restless kitty who moaned to be outside and darted toward every moving thing in my garden and adjacent yards? She probably couldn't understand why I didn't chase chipmunks.
Smoky was an inveterate hunter, yet the most affectionate cat I've ever known. Her low, guttural growl-purr as and her rolling on her back in the alley after I returned home were endearing trademarks. Both Peppy and Smoky learned to drink from water glasses, like I do.
Smoky was part-Russian Blue, a lesser-known breed I've come to adore. Also part shorthair, Smoky's Russian influence belied her traditional lineage. Smoky was born to roam. Even when I took her this fall, with Peppy, to a "blessing of the animals" at church, she broke loose from a makeshift leash. A fellow parishioner caught her before she could roam elsewhere.

Smoky was popular that day with several little girls who wanted to stroke and hold her. But knowing Smoky's wild streak and my difficulties containing her, I hesitated letting anyone lay hands on my Smoky. A friend for whom I've done landscape design snapped photos of me with Smoky and a reluctant Peppy, who cringed in a pet carrier beneath a blanket. Several doggies had made their presence known, to Peppy's chagrin. But Smoky was unfazed by dogs, and a former neighbor told me Smoky had challenged her sheepdog in the alley. Smoky loved the life I gave her, and she showed it.
Russian Blues are a recent Americanized refinement of English and Scandinavian bloodlines of Russian Cats brought by sailors in the 1860s from northern Russia. Ancestors were called Archangel Cats, traceable to the Arctic port of Archangel northeast of Leningrad, where legend says they were trapped for their plush double layer of fur comparable to that of seals and beavers. Descended from the czars' Royal Cat, Russians were said to be one of Queen Victoria's favorites.
Russian Blues' coats are the piece de resistance. Sleek, lustrous, silvery, and in Smoky's case, soft gray, they are incredibly soft, more so than my memory of part-Persian cats I had as a child. I loved to stroke Smoky, her fur melting into my paws, making patterns of sheen in her thick fur. Even though hair is a byproduct of any cat, Smoky shed very little, much less than the part-Persians I had as a child before coming to IU.
Smoky fit all the qualities ascribed to Russian Blues: gentle, quiet, clean, sensitive, affectionate, intelligent, graceful, muscular, even majestic. Her shorthair breeding, birth in an outbuilding at our nursery, plus my own influences all contributed, no doubt, to her wild streak.
This earthiness is what nearly disables me as I grieve her loss. Our last Saturday together she sniffed and scratched in the soil as I dug false sunflowers, then anointed the ground in her cute kitty way. As I pruned and dug out ground cover to transplant the sunflowers, she jumped in my lap, whereupon I gave her my heartiest hug. I had a premonition she would not be with me forever, and I thanked the Lord frequently for blessing me with both Peppy and Smoky.
I doubt I could have made Smoky a strictly indoor kitty. She tolerated her time indoors, but longed to be outside, and while I like to think she waited for me when I saw her peering out the living-room window when I came home from work, she had "business" in mind, namely chipmunks, mice, birds or rabbits.
Half-dead rabbits she brought to my back door were bigger than she was, and she seemed to grasp my intolerance of her "birding"; in recent years she brought baby birds deftly in her jaws, and I released them. Yet, over her nine-year residence, I interred numerous adorable creatures in my backyard, often with prayers.
That recent Thursday when it took all day and all my courage, I buried the most adorable of them all, Smoky herself--"returned her to God," as my priest put it. By candlelight, beneath some yews where she often scampered, I placed her, intoning prayers. I later planted 'Casa Blanca' lilies and 'Apricot Jewel' species tulips on her grave, as well as August lilies I found while digging. Smoky would like the idea of "surprise lilies."

Smoky's free spirit matched my own. "My little Pookie," as I also called her, will remain indelibly imprinted in my heart.
Finding Smoky's mutilated body was something of a relief from fears she may been mauled by a rabid racoon or dog. After three days scouring the neighborhood, some closure was reached. Upon seeing her sprawled on the pavement, I remember saying, "Oh, Smoky." Stroking her soft gray fur cloaking a cold, stiff body, I was struck by the incredibly happy look on her face--Russian Blues are often said to look as if they are smiling--and her tail was unfurled, as if she had just had the time of her life. The combination of glee and carnage, though, bothered me.
But Dr. Sue Whitman, my Spencer veternarian, reassured me, from my descriptions, that Smoky most likely died quickly, didn't suffer, and died chasing her dream--er, chipmunks.
Rest in peace, my little Pookie; I trust there are chipmunks in heaven.