I'll never forget when I got home that night, my wife had 3 cats in the garage. She had found them on the side of the road that night. A mother cat and her two kittens(long haired tabby, tortoise shell and a black one with 3 white spots on his stomach). Some heartless peorson dropped them off on our road. The mother cat was in the middle of the road when my wife came upon her. As she got out of the car, the cat ran to the side of the road where the two kittens were. They were starved, the mother was dry and could not feed them anymore. So my wife brought them home, fed them and made a bed out of a box and some towels. When i arrived home, my wife met me at the door, holding a beautiful little kitten in her hands. As soon as i saw these cats, I knew that they would be living with us, even though my wife seemed dead set on bringing them to the local animal shelter. Days went on and we still had them. Finally, we decided that we could not part with them, since we gave them names played with them every chance that we got. After all that they had been through,we decided that they had to remain together. We named the mother cat Momma because that's what we were calling her and she wouldn't answer to anything else. The tortoise shell was given a bizzar name, Bizzle,it just seemed to fit her. And the black one, Skidders, my wife said that he was skiddish at first and would not let her pick him up. The kittens both had large eyes and looked so innocent, every time they were acknowledged, they would start to purr. They ate every meal like it was their last for the longest time. Our other two cats recieved them well, not much of a confrontation, it was like they knew what hardships the other cats went through. It was funny to watch them explore the house, they were into everything. They loved attention. For the first few years, we would pick up Momma to pet her, but she would squirm until we let her go, only for her to return with a kitten, as if to say, here, my kittens need it more than I do. My wife wanted to give skidders away but i wouldn't let her, every time that i would take a nap on the couch, I would wake up to find Skidders curled up on my chest, sound to sleep. No matter where we were in the house, Skidders had to be there with us. If we sat on the couch watching TV, he would sit at the end next to us and when we slept, he would be at our feet. Skidders loved attention, he was a very lovable cat. If he wanted to sample what we were eating, he would lay on his back and look at us with his big eyes. He always seemed to get his way. I had never seen a cat that liked his belly rubbed. All three of the cats loved to go outside in the summer, as soon as the sun would come up, you could hear Skidders' loud meow, letting us know that it was time to go out. Too bad the sun came up so early. It was like ke knew the time that I would get up for work because I let him out when I left. He loved to play under the big spruce tree out back, we would always find him there. Then one night in August of 2005, we let him out, never to see him alive again. Skidders would usually be sitting on the lounge chair on the deck, the next morning, he was not there. We called for him for the next two days, but nothing. I went out looking for him but in the wrong places. Our neighbor had a cat that looked just like him, so we called and left an answering machine message asking if he got into their house. Little did we know that our other neighbor had left a message that they found a cat that looked like theirs and that unfortunately it wasn't good. That afternoon while i was taking a shower, our neighbor came over and showed my wife where our Skidders had been. I didn't know what was going on, all of a sudden I heard my wife crying, i quickly finished, got dressed and went downstairs to see what was wrong. In my heart, I knew that Skidders was gone. She told me that the neighbors had found him and that he was in the garage. I went out to the garage to find his lifeless body in a box. He had been dead for at least two days. We assumed he was struck by a car at night. I looked at him in disbelief, waiting for him to sit up and give a loud meow, but i knew that it would never happen. We had lost our little buddy. I couldn't bring myself to burry him, I had to call my father to do it. Our cats are like our children, we were devestated, even my father had a hard time to burry him. We burried him under his favorite tree in the back yard, the big spruce tree. Even Momma and Bizzel knew that something was wrong, they would sit in Skidders' favorite spots, as if they were waiting for him. Even their facial expressions showed that they were saddened, looking at us, as if to say, "where is he". It has been eight months since that tragic day and sometimes it feels like it just happened. It is pretty ironic that we found him on the side of the road each time. I wish that we would have never let him out that night, if I could relive one time in my life, I would go back to that night and keep him inside. Skidders was a special cat, he brought joy to us, he will never be forgotten. Now he is in a better place waiting for us to find him again.