We have a cat. An old cat. Maybe she’s senile. Maybe she has kitty Alzheimer’s. Or maybe she just has a good imagination and is hoping we will accept her earnest gifts.

Meet Spice.

In her younger days, Spice used to catch birds, mice, and snakes. Not nice, I know. But it’s what cats do. She didn’t do it often, and they were usually taken away from her. She wasn’t the deposit-it-on-your-doorstep type of cat.

Things are different now. Spice is sixteen years old. She stays inside more. Now she brings us stuff. It started a few years ago, and at first we weren’t sure how things would just magically appear in the middle of the floor during the night. Hair scrunchies, foam hair curlers, items no one was really sure where they had come from. Honestly, it was a little creepy sometimes.

Eventually we realized it was Spice, because she added sound to the repertoire. She does this weird two syllable meow that sounds like, “Timmy, come quick, the barn is burning down with all of the horses still inside!”  In the beginning we used to go running to see what horrible mishap had befallen some poor kitty, only to find Spice proudly standing over the vanquished Lincoln log. Now we know the drill. “Sounds like Spice has caught something,” we say now. We find her with a cotton ball, wonder how and where she finds these things, pet her, and say, “Good kitty, good Spice.”

And then the other night she woke me up with that horrible yowl. 3 a.m. I was not pleased. There is only so much meowing a person can sleep through. I got up and opened our bedroom door to the hallway, thinking one of the other cats must be dead on the road for this much racket. Then I saw it through the light shining in from the skylight.

This time Spice had caught a real mouse.

A  computer mouse, that is.

Oh, Spice, we are going to miss you when you’re gone. 🙂

S. Smith is the author of the awesome and award-winning middle grade series, Seed Savers. Visit her Facebook and Pinterest pages. Follow her on Twitter. Sign up for the newsletter!