RIP Sweet Monabelle

Before I get back to blogging more regularly this winter I needed to pay homage to Mona. She left us in late August after a short bout with cancer. I rarely mentioned her here on the blog because she was the mostly feral ghost cat. This meant she lived in my garden, but to be honest, she loved it more than any other creature.

I found her as a kitten in the parking lot of a large mall nearby. She may have been a feral kitten, or an abandoned kitten, I don’t know. She was alone under some bushes, starving, and it was a cold and rainy night. I had to bring her home. This was years ago when I first moved into this house.

A few years back she gave up the garden and moved into the house. Most of the time, she was in the basement, surrounded by my plants—or else sitting on a ledge looking out of the window. She was happy with us, but she just couldn’t always get along with the other cats. In her final months, she came upstairs more and spent time on the bed with them though. They developed an understanding. Like Maurice before him, Felix also bonded a bit with her. They’d often sit together in the basement.

It’s been difficult for me to write this. It was a complicated and quiet relationship I had with Mona. Part of me wants to say so much more, but another part of me wants to respect her privacy. She was my wild love, my garden cat, and sometimes we were a bit feral together. I’m going to miss that.