Block Island Cats make the Best Moms

Block Island, an off-season haunt for me, is a place assuredly most haunted.

There is resident talk of ghosts seen on the island, especially those spirits restless and active at the Old Town Inn, a hotel location, geographically central to the island.

I would often prefer to stay at the Old Town Inn, inspired by the stories of its often seen ghosts.

History indeed confirms that a State Senator who lived there in the early 1800′s, faced charges that he murdered his ailing mother for his inheritance, by throwing her down the long narrow stairway, a stairway still in evidence.

I surmise that he was acquitted.

But the staircase and basement area judge fate and history differently.

The owner told me that he had seen the bare bulb in the basement often spin of its own accord; it kept him and mainland workmen away from that basement.

Most locals were too leery an ilk to spend any real, required time down there, doing some essential repairs.

When restorations had initially begun, it had been noticed that all interior doors had been removed; when the new owners had queried contractors why this had been done, a disturbing answer had been returned.

The many doors’ constant opening and closing by themselves had unnerved, distracted and unsettled the mainland workmen.

They had removed the doors, erasing these house symptoms, but not the disease, itself.

Guests have asked the front desk about a ghostly woman they see from their upstairs windows, one who walks in the deeper shadows of the garden at night, wearing a pink, long flowing gown and carrying a parasol.

She was seen in the back garden, late at night.

I would stay here on Block Island, despite its ghosts, because it was far from scenic views of the harbor, and was thus far from crowds of daily ferried tourists.

This central location on Block Island allowed me to be more reclusive in my wanderings, far from people, which was my nature.

I wandered among persimmon trees and wild plum, across vacant meadows and fields.

On one such long walk, a deer froze in a field and then bolted from view and

during my return to the Inn, on that same cold, windy afternoon, I saw a cat

quickly scurry under the foundation of the hotel, a cat as orange in color as the drifting October Maple leaves.

Only the feral cats who roam the streets know its ghosts well as permanent residents, surely lost and not yet found.

Block Island’s cats, independent and grateful creatures, like solitary ghosts, have astonished me in the oddest ways.

Whenever New York City snow drifts high enough to seal all the doors and windows of February, I conjure an image of frozen kittens cuddling in the Rhode Island snow.

That image haunts me, though I’ve never seen it.

I was informed when I inquired, that she was feral and would have to over winter on the island, that she belonged to no one and had recently had a litter somewhere under the cellar.

The staff, who took pity on her and who fed her, would soon leave by early November.

The hotel wouldn’t re-open until mid April; in deep winter snows, with a new litter of kittens, she would be on her own.

I was moved to go into town to buy some canned cat food and these I presented to the kitchen staff who cared for her.

I was told that I could

feed her myself, as she was just outside the kitchen, awaiting a handout..

I opened two cans and spoke to her, watched her as she fed.

I wondered aloud to the kitchen staff what fate might bring to those kittens when heavy winter snow lay against the outside of those abandoned

kitchen doors, all winter long.

Later, about ten o’clock in the evening, I heard a knock on my door that stopped my writing and upon opening the door, I found the chef outside, smiling warmly.

He asked me if I could follow him down to the kitchen.

She had, he said, been grateful to me and had brought me a ‘thank you’ gift, in eloquent cat artistry.

A large, dead marsh rat lay by the back kitchen door, fully displayed, on the welcome mat.

Puffed up and very proud, she paraded back and forth over it, purring and repeatedly making eye contact with me.

She had caught it and then brought it to me, not just as a thanks, but also as a token.

It had assuaged my anxieties about her and her broods’ survival, facing an icy cruel winter, with no food, all alone on the island with only ghosts, as her company..

I recall that cat’s

unflawed nature, uncomplaining and noble;

her show of gratitude and
courageous

resiliency showed her fearlessness.

 Alone, and

with new hungry kittens to feed, she would face a winter

of killing blizzards.