I took possession of Little Sheila one cold November night in 1990 from the Roselle Marathon gas station, thanks to Nick Pierotti, whose mechanics retrieved her from underneath the hood of a customer's car. Earlier in the evening while paying for my gasoline inside, I had heard her meowing and asked the cashier if she had a cat behind the counter. She hadn't. The cat was meowing so loudly outside she might as well have been inside. A stray, they were feeding her from the vending machine, Fig Newtons mostly, but had been unable to catch her. I went outside to try myself, but after a half hour all I got was a glimpse, which was all it took: I went inside to say I'd take her if they could just catch her. Which they finally did, just before the ten o'clock news. The minute she hit the living room she spotted the upside down lid of a cardboard box into which she jumped and presently did her business.
She was sickly from the beginning. One veterinarian advised us to put her down. Instead we forced the pills down her throat three times a day for two weeks. Somehow she recovered. She repaid us with eighteen years of companionship until her sad passing, this date, 2008.
A year later I think it's pretty clear that it was Little Sheila who did the possessing.
As a tiger, who by chance hath spy'd,
In some purlieu, two gentle fawns at play,
Straight couches close; then rising, changes oft
His couchant watch.
Milton's Paradise Lost
