One night after Dad had a bad car accident and broke his back, he couldn't get comfortable in bed, so he went to the couch where he could prop his back and lift his feet. Sometime after midnight I heard a loud scream, followed by a thump against the wall. I rushed out to see what was going on, with the thought that Dad might have re-injured himself; only to find Sunshine standing with her head against the wall, body slumping to the side and a glazed look in her eyes. Dad was OK but was fully awake rubbing his chin and looking confused. I asked him what happened and he reported that sharp pain in both cheeks and his chin had awakened him. We figured Sunshine was finally trying to eat him.
Since then, Dad locked Sunshine in the kids room at nights as she was surely the
When we moved to Missouri, due to a snafu with a potential employer for Dad, we had to live in a camping trailer for several months. Sunshine did not appreciate this confinement and took every opportunity to throw up on Dad's pillow to show her displeasure. So when she became familiar with her environment and we were able to let her out,
she proceeded to intimidate and subjugate all the cats in the area.
Since we were living on property owned by friends, this was an uncomfortable situation.
When winter came we were able to move into a large farmhouse with around 40 acres and Sunshine loved it. The house was large and there were lots of
stray farm cats there for her to cow and intimidate. Unfortunately, Sunshine went into "heat" at this time, during which we tried to keep her indoors.
Also during this time we collected a
homeless cat that had been hanging about a friend's house.
Thinking it was a girl, we took it home and named it Felicia (but that is the next story).
We found out 3 or 4 weeks later that Felicia was actually Felix. Too late to keep him from helping Sunshine create progeny.
Despite our attempts to keep her celibate, Sunshine delivered 6 healthy kittens, five of which were copies of the
farm cats with the exception one which looked exactly like Felicia/Felix.
Sunshine was a much better parent than pet, and did all the normal things with her kittens, with the exception of the Felix look-alike, which we named Tuxedo.
Felix, being an indoor (homeless) cat and, with a paternal instinct, took a warm liking to Tuxedo and when Felix wasn't caring for him, Tuxedo would spend his time in Dad's (
who had fully recovered from his injury ) shirt pocket where he could keep warm.
Sunshine followed her instinct, and eventually made it back to ruling her realm in the wild. The last I saw of her, she was headed deep into the woods, presumably to hunt but never returned.
Dad went looking for her when he had packed up and we were ready to leave for California. He couldn't find her and so someplace in the "Irish wilderness" of southern Missouri is a tiger
stripped cat who is intimidating everything and everyone within her realm.
