Take Me Home Country Roads

by Mewsette

He was a very large and beautiful longhaired Harlequin cat. Mostly white, with a fluffy black tail, a black spot on his side like someone had dropped an inkwell on him, and a jaunty black beret on his head. They said he had fierce yellow eyes. Well, they weren't fierce, because he never had a fierce thought in his life. He was the gentlest cat I ever knew. I can almost see him now, when autumn has come again, a season when we two spent more time outside in the cooler days, and he would hide under the house when he didn't want to go in at night. In the morning, there he would be at the back door, ready to come in for breakfast and tell me what he'd been up to all night. We shared all our secrets. We were seldom apart. Until we were moved to another place. It was way out in the country, same as our old home had been. The new place became my real home later. But it wasn't his home. So he set out by himself one day, on those country roads through the hils, to go home. He didn't tell me where he was going. But after he was gone, I knew where and why. Home to him was the home he was born in, the only home he knew. Even with me there, even with our own human mom there, no other place could be home. You see, we were more different than I thought. To me, home was where my mom was, even if it became a different place. I got used to it. But to him, home was down the country road in Texas that he knew so well. I hope someone kind took him in and gave him breakfast somewhere along the country roads of his journey. I hope there was a house for him to spend the night under if he needed to. I hope he missed me like I missed him. Someday I will go and see the country roads he did. Someday they will take me home, and I'll see my brother again.