Requiem Salvatore

It was mid-June, 1998, a lightly drizzly night, and Peter was out sweeping the street, and I was out with him. It wasn't uncommon for us to be outside that late, when the streets of South Philadelphia would be calm and quiet. Days earlier we had lost our roommate's cat Muffkin, so when I heard the soft, plaintive cries of a cat somewhere nearby, I went looking for their source, believing I might be the hero and I might have found the missing cat. What I found instead surprised me: under a car, a strange-looking creature. "Is it a cat?" I wasn't even sure. We lured it out with Muffkin's food and it immediately started following me. The colors of its face were unlike anything I had seen, split right down the middle, which I woud later find out was the mark of a tortoiseshell cat, and I would also later find out that tortoiseshell cats were always female. She was so dirty that when I pet her, my hand came back black, but she seemed friendly, and her dirtiness suggested she'd been on the streets for a while. I wasn't sure what to do, so we decided that we would walk inside for a minute, and leave the door ajar, and if she followed us in, we would keep her. And she did, and so we did.

A crazy cracked-out neighbor passed, and in his crazy way, grabbed the mail out of another neighbor's box and scattered it on the street. Peter picked up the loose mail, and he name on the envelopes was Louis DiSalvatore, and so we named this strange new creature Salvatore.

The next day she disappeared in the house, was gone the whole day, and when she reappeared, she had completely cleaned herself. She would run to the window when she heard my voice on the street and bound down the stairs to greet me when I arrived home. She liked Peter just fine but she loved me. She had a litter of kittens a few months later, and Peter's brother accidentally let her out before we were able to get her fixed, so she got pregnant again. She was so attached to me that she jumped on my lap to let me know that her water was breaking, and let me carry her up to the cardboard box we'd prepared for her and her soon-to-arrive kittens, and I stayed with her for the entire delivery as I had the first time, but this time she needed my help pushing out the first of the babies. He was coming out feet first and she was having trouble getting him out because his feet were getting caught, so I had to help her push him out by grabbing the kittens paws and pulling as gently as I could, in time to her pushes. The baby came out healthy, and five more followed.

When our house was filled with cats, Sal was not known for her personality. She was always a bit touchy about where she would allow you to touch her, and was the only cat I had who would swat or nip. But when she was away from other cats, she'd revert to the sweet kitten I'd fallen in love with years earlier.

She survived getting hit by a car in front of our house, right in front of Peter's eyes, and I still remember him screaming for me from the street, inconsolable. Like a cat, she had gone and hid after the impact, but we had found her, and she'd let us bring her inside. She'd been fine.

She was the third of our cats to come live with me in Brooklyn, after Olive and Pea, but shortly after she arrived I had to move to San Francisco and I left them all there. temporarily. Pea returned to Philadelphia, and Olive came here to SF, but Sal stayed in Brooklyn with my friend Wayne. I always imagined we would live together again one day, that I would come back for her and bring her here. I saw her earlier this month when I was visiting Wayne, and she clearly remembered me, and it was so good to see her. She's a reminder of a simpler time in my life, before I'd quite formed, before I'd become whatever it is that I am now, before I'd gone through my problems with Peter and eventually moved away to a raft of new problems here. She knew me before I knew myself, and I had rescued her from the street, and we loved one another without wondering why.

This morning Wayne texted me to tell me that Sal was gone. I know she is just a cat, and not even the nicest cat I've ever known, but I'm taking this one kind of hard. I couldn't rescue you this time, my little girl, but I hope you're happy wherever you are, and I hope you still remember me, because I remember you.