A Pottery Urn for An Amazing Cat
Credence (my gender-neutral child now in their 20’s) and I adopted two cats from an animal pound 12 years ago. We named them Holmes and Watson after our heroes, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.
After my marriage breakdown with Credence’s father, Steve, Credence and I became even closer. We decided the first thing we wanted to do was to have a pet, which was forbidden by Steve in the past.
We both loved cats, especially striped tabbies. So, we put the word out that we were looking to buy a tabby.
One wintery morning, when the air outside was still misty, one of our friends called us and said there was a tabby at a remote animal pound for adoption, but we had to be quick because the tabby would be put down in two hours if no one adopted her.
Credence and I bounced off our beds, grabbed our coats and drove one and a half hours to the pound. It didn’t even occur to us that we had skipped our morning wake-up coffee.
When we arrived, Shazzie, the lady at the pound said, “Oh, you’re too late. The tabby’s gone.”
“What? But we drove all the way here. Did you put her down?” I was horrified.
“Oh, no, no, no. Someone came and took her half an hour ago.”
I was relieved but disappointed. “Do you have another tabby we can adopt?”
“No. But we have a litter of black and white kittens. Come with me. I’ll show you.” Shazzie marched ahead and didn’t even glance back at us.
Credence and I hesitated. We came here for stripes not black and white. But we shrugged our shoulders and ran after Shazzie.
She took us through areas where they kept stray dogs, goats, chickens, rabbits and even horses.
It was bedlam in there. The squawking, bleating, neighing, barking…and the smell.
“A gentleman brought them in a week ago,” Shazzie shouted over the noises. “He lives out in the bush. A stray cat came to his back door crying for food all the time. So, he put food and water out for her every day. One day, he opened the back door and there was a litter of wriggling kittens looking just like the cat he had been feeding. That’s the thing. You feed one cat and she repays you with more cats to feed. Anyway, he brought the kittens in. Seven of them. We can’t keep them for long. If they’re not adopted by the end of this week, we’ll have to put them down.”
Shazzie stopped at a cage and opened the gate to let us in.
I stepped into the meowing cage and locked eye with a pitch-black kitten sitting high on the shelf on the back wall.
The black kitten gave me a stern stare as if it was saying, “What took you so long?”
I knew in that moment I needed to take this black cat home.
Credence exclaimed in excitement and stooped to play with six black-and-white kittens below the shelf where the black one perched.
“I want this one. Look at him, how affectionate he is!” Credence was smooching a kitten that had a white upside-down question mark on his face.
“He’s cross-eyed,” I said, noticing the kitten’s eyes looking at different directions.
“Awww…how adorable. I want him.” Credence held the kitten so tight that it disappeared into Credence’s arms.
That day, we drove home with two meowing, delightful cats in a basket and we named the black-and-white one Holmes and the black one Watson.
Holmes and Watson gave Credence and I so much love and happiness over the years. We’re truly grateful for having them in our lives.
Late last year, Holmes passed. He was 11. We miss him very much. So, I applied my pottery skills to make an urn to hold his ashes.
Watson now lives with me. He continues to be healthy, active and affectionate. I have included Holmes and Watson’s photos below, after the photos of the making of the urn.
