Chiquita was a gift from Heaven. I'd been depressed for a while about the loss of Fluffy, and was wandering about my Grandma's house one day. My sister's and I decided to go outside and play baseball, but before the game got going, we heard a loud and strange sound. It was a sort of howl sound that kept repeating itself over and over. It was obvious to us that some kind of animal was in distress but we didn't know where it was.

Soon, a little black kitten came wandering down the road, and to my surprise the loud and plaintive noises were coming from it! I walked calmly out to meet it, and picked it up out of the road. (I learned later that my mom was fearfully watching me through the window, it's never a good idea to approach a wild/hurt animal and I was quite young at the time)

She was tame enough though, and we couldn't see any injury on her. After feeding her, she calmed down quite a bit. She purred at me and promptly fell asleep. It took a little bit of cajoling to get my mom to agree to keep her, but she finally agreed. I named her Chiquita after my favorite food....bananas. My older sister found this hilarious because the cat was black, so she constantly called her "rotten banana" instead of her name which infuriated me, and led to a lot of our fights.

Chiquita was quite fun to have around, and she agreed to do most anything I asked her to. She played with our toys, and in our toys, and with us like she'd always been there.

She dissapeared from my life one August afternoon, and I never found out what happened to her. I always hoped that she found another home rather than died, but I will probably never know. There were so many dangerous things in our neighborhood that my imagination tortured me every night as to her fate. Dogs, guns, cars, snakes, skunks, foxes, badgers, and crazy people all could've played a roll. The not knowing is the worst.