She was a paranoid cat

Homeless, penniless and afraid of the law. You might say she was catatonic. I guess she did the best she could under the circumstances.

  Apparently she had been abandoned after an abusive relationship. and had taken to the streets. Who knows what a sordid life she lived, alone and unwanted. I guess she could have been even beautiful once, but time had ravaged her appearance. 

Cat-- we called her, scrounged for garbage and lived in the shadows.

 We had tried to encourage her to  " come out" but she would have none of our pleading. Mostly she hid under an assumed name ( we did not know her real one, and Kitty did not fit her). 

 If we left food for her, she would not touch it until we left, and we assumed she had been given old mice at one time, and she had her scruples.

 Time went on, and we thought she had moved on to easier pickings with shady characters, but one day we spied her on the roof of the house. Actually it was under the roof in a cranny there. We were not about to entice her down. She figured she had moved up in the world, and who were we to deny her?

One day Martha, or was it Andrea, Kari, or  maybe Janna, came to me with the disturbing news that they heard noises in the wall of the stairs. They said it sounded like kittens

mewing. Oh my! What to do? I listened too, and they were right. How did kittens get in a wall, and how could we get them out? We could not bear to let them die in there. 

 Throwing caution to the  winds, or ignoring repercussions, I got a crowbar from the garage, and along with knives and hammers, I managed to pry the knotty- pine boards from the stair wall. We got a flashlight and looked down between the studs,and about three or so feet down at the bottom, were several tiny kittens!! 

 How to get them out without injury was a big problem.  Finally I threw away the rest of the " caution," and got on my hands and knees in the bathroom, on the reverse side, and knocked a hole in the plaster!

The kittens were saved!!

 That old biddy of a cat, had produced the sweetest, cutest kittens. We cared for them and they grew into nice cats. 

 Somehow the new born kittens had fallen from the rafters and landed in the house-- or the wall of the house. As for Cat, we never saw her again.

 Maybe Cat had repaid us for her temporary lodging.

 You never know about cats--  and repentance, and forgiveness.