Madam calico is not well. A week or so ago it looks like she got into a fight with another cat somewhere. I’d seen her walking along a block over on 41st street as I was walking back home. Now I wonder if she got into a fight with a cat she wasn’t familiar with over there. But I’ve no idea. She had bite marks on both her ears and what looks like a small puncture wound on her nose that might have come from a cat’s claw.

For several days afterward she seemed withdrawn and sickly. She let her fur get a bit matted and unkempt. But then she seemed to improve. Now she’s looking sickly again, and there’s a patch on her left cheek she’s scratched completely clear of fur. Down in there is what looks like a bloody scab. I’ve no idea what’s going on with it.

Amazingly, she still hunts. Sickly though she seems. And she’s still good at it. After the fight she wasn’t doing too well and one morning I was making a fuss over her at the front door to try and perk her up a bit. She has this routine of coming inside then going back outside…in and out in and out… I can’t leave my station at the front door when she’s doing this or she’ll panic and shoot back out like a rocket. So I open the door and close the door and open it and close it and so on. I usually close the front door and walk away after a while because I have things to do around here. But I left it open only closing the outer storm door which has a full length plastic window that lets her look inside and check up on me. Sometimes when I do that she curls up and naps right on my doorstep. I spent more time than usual with her that morning and she seemed to perk up a bit. Then I went inside with only the storm door closed and after a while I heard this tiny little meow outside and I looked over and she was staring back into the house. So I went over to fuss over her some more. She’d brought me a freshly killed sparrow.

She’s probably something like 12 years old now, which is old for any cat but astonishingly old for a street cat. I wish I could do something more for her than just feed her and make sure she always has fresh water. But she’ll have none of it, and I won’t betray her trust by trapping her inside. I’m keeping my fingers crossed she gets better, but we’re both old bodies that don’t heal as well as they used to. Whatever life she has left she’ll be as free as she was when I first gained her trust and she decided to make my front porch her hangout, and that I was safe enough to allow closeness.