Phoenix

He would be eighteen years old this year.

In 2003, Robert and Dennis were riding their bicycles all over Henrietta. They were part of a group of boys, all thirteen, born barely a month apart, that liked to explore the area. They never told us where they were going, because we as Robert's parents, had a restricted area where they could ride their bikes. As long as they came home safe, that was basically all that mattered, unless the police brought them home.

So on Lehigh Station road, there was this old barn. It was part of a long abandoned farm. One side had completely fallen off, the other was barely hanging on. The barn had a cement foundation, but there were rotten boards all over the floor. The roof was full of holes that the birds flew through and vines hung down from.

Who cares about that stuff when you are twelve?

We had two cats already. Speckle, the male cat, was a large white and black spotted, short hair who liked to catch mice and leave the remains to stink up the kitchen. Charcoal, the female, was beating Speckle up until he got bigger than her, and then just laid on everyone's lap whether you wanted her to lay on your lap or not.

As Robert and Dennis walked around the barn, they saw the flash of lightening out of the open wall. It was time to leave. The barn had no protection against the torrents of rain that would soon be battering the three remaining walls of the barn. They got on their bikes to leave.

"Meow"

Both of them got off of their bikes to see where the sound came from.

"Under the wood over there," Dennis pointed as the wind began to whip up.

They gently moved some boards away from the floor near the wall. As the rain crashed on the roof they found him, a tiny ball of fur, huddled against the cement wall. Dennis pulled him out from under the boards. He could hold him completely in your hand, the cat was that small. There were no other cats around. He had been abandoned by his mother and left to die.

Dennis who lived closer ran home in the rain to get his mother to bring the car to pick up the bikes. She arrived a few moments later. Dennis was so allergic to cats that as soon as Robert and Dennis got to his house, they brought to cat over to our house.

Robert wasn't as allergic to cats, he was taking medicine to deal with the cats we had. So he made a box with fake fur from an old coat and put him in it for the night in a room downstairs.

I went to the store and bought an eyedropper and a carton of cat milk in the pet section of the store. The cat was so tiny, I had doubts that he would last the night.

The next morning, Robert and I went to check on the cat. We opened the door and looked in the box and the cat wasn't there. As we looked around the cat popped his head up from another blanket on the floor.

"Meow"

We took him to the Vet that day. He was eight weeks old and weighed nine ounces. The Vet said he was severely malnourished and was lucky to be alive. The Vet said that if there was something wrong with the cat, sometimes the mother abandons it and let's it die.

Since Dennis found the cat but couldn't keep him, we let him name him. Dennis said he wasn't a Harry Potter fan, but named our barn cat Phoenix. He said it had nothing to do with the fact that, "The Order of the Phoenix" was the best selling book at that time.

The barn fell down the following winter. Not surprising, it was headed in that direction for a while. Robert got his Doctorate at the University of Rochester. Dennis has a Master's and works at Rochester Institute of Technology and works there in design. That little group still hangs out together. They're all in their thirties now.

And Phoenix lived until 2009. Speckle became his mentor. He taught Phoenix all his cat tricks. Phoenix had a tumor in his intestines. We buried him in the back with Charcoal.