It wasn’t too long after our cat Laddy ran away sometime between 1975 and ’76 that a new stray kitten ingratiated himself to us and merged his little self into our household. My Dad gave him the moniker Charcoal simply because he was solid gray…charcoal gray. I had established a fondness for kitties at a young age, and I fell in love with this little guy right off the bat. We decided to keep him as an outdoor cat that would occasionally come inside.
I still remember the first day after we had claimed him as our own and given him a name. I woke up in the morning and went to the front door and yelled out “Charrrrrrcoal!!” His head popped up from the ditch in our front yard and he came running toward the front door.
These two photo slides of Charcoal are the only two that I have been able to locate. They are dated September of 1976, and I’m sure this is not long after he came to us. Unfortunately, we didn’t have Charcoal for a very long time. During the Fall of 1977 he became extremely ill and required surgery. We gave him the best care that we could and Mom dutifully administered his meals through a tube through his neck and we kept him safe and warm in our garage.
I’ll never forget the day that I was walking home from kindergarten and Dad met me at the door. He somberly said “I’ve got some bad news for Brad.” I asked what it was. He replied “Charcoal died.” My former cat Laddy had run away (as far as we ever knew), but this was my first exposure to death. I sobbed and sobbed in remembrance of my little cat.
Charcoal was only our for about a year, but his legacy lived on, both in the book I wrote for my second grade young authors project – called My Cats – and in Charcoal’s successor, Charcoal 2, a cat I ended up having for about two and a half years. And he still lives on in this posting.
1976 will continue…
What a pretty kitty. I’ve dealt with the death of animals on several occasions and I think we’re lucky that our parents didn’t just say, “we sent him to a farm to live on” They were honest about it.
Rob always had dogs, but he enjoys cats. I’m glad he likes cats, because I think they are so neat!
Amber
January 24th, 2008