Alone in the Maine woods.
I headed for the mountain behind the house, and climbed until I got hungry. There was a squirrel in a tree, so I climbed for a while, but he jumped to another tree and ran away. It took a while to get down, and when I did, there was a noise behind a bush. I quietly crawled forward until I saw it was a fellow cat. He was really skinny, full of burrs and lots of fleas. How I hate fleas! He said that his name was Scat, and that his people left him a year ago. He barely made it through the winter and was really frightened that the days were getting colder again. He said that he was almost caught by a Coyote in the middle of the winter and that food was very difficult to find. I asked him why his people left him and he said that they came here from far away for summer vacation and they didn't want to take him to their home in the south. Someone told them that cats can live very well on their own in the Maine woods. Of course, that isn't true. Scat said that he met 3 other cats that had been thrown away by their people. All three had died during the winter. One was eaten by a Ceyote, one got sick and the other died of a broken heart. The story gets even more sad, but I don't want to make you feel bad. Just tell people that it is very difficult for a cat to stay alive on its own, and if they don't want their cat, they should bring it to a shelter. Shelters find homes for cats.
Scat and I decided to team up and hunt together. We did fairly well for a while. My big problem was that I got his fleas, ear mites and eye infection. As the days got colder, there was less and less food and Scat began to look really bad. One day we were in a field looking for mice, when Scat began to run. He had seen an owl swooping down from the sky. I ran faster and ducked into a pile of brush but Scat wasn't fast enough. The last I saw of him was in the talons of the Owl headed for the trees. I felt so sad for several days, that I didn't do much hunting. I just slept a lot and wondered what to do. I didn't want to suffer through the winter, but what to do? If only I knew where my first family lived. They would take me back! I did a lot of hunting for the next few days and got some strength back. Didn't know what direction to go to find my people, so I just walked, hunted and slept where there was some shelter. It was very bad on cold rainy days. That seemed to be the time the fleas got the most hungry. Where to go? What to do? Maybe I should just lay down and die.