David McElroy

When four kittens were born to a feral mother cat nearly six years ago, one of them was different from her sisters.

There were four kittens born to this small feral cat named Molly. (You can read her story here.) Three of the kittens survived and two of them inherited at least some of their mother’s fear and lack of interest in humans. (Click here to see the four kittens at about 6 weeks, just before the fourth died.)

Then there was Emily.

Almost from the beginning, this tiny little girl — about 4.5 pounds, very much like her mother and sisters — wanted attention and affection. She quickly decided that her favorite place in the world was on top of me. Every night for almost six years, she slept on my back. When she was a tiny baby, she slept next to my head, as in this next picture, but after a few months she switched to climbing onto my back instead.

She was so light that I could sometimes wake up and not be certain whether she was there or not. Even if I turned over, she would adjust her position and climb back on top. She claimed me as her own.

Late last fall, Emily started losing a little bit of weight. She had always weighed slightly less than her surviving sisters, Charlotte and Anne, but she slowly lost down to 2.5 pounds. In mid-December, the vet tested her for various things — feline leukemia, parasites and other possibilities that I don’t even remember — but none of the tests revealed anything. She was still eating well. Her body just didn’t seem to be absorbing enough nutrients anymore and she had persistent diarrhea.

If something didn’t change, she was going to die.

The vet put her on a daily steroid pill to help her put on some weight and increase her appetite. She hated her daily pills and drew blood from my hands and arms many times with her claws and teeth over the past few months, but we got the medicine into her every day. Her weight got back up to 3.2 pounds and her stool solidified quite a bit. She continued to eat well, but then she plateaued and remained about 3 pounds.

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As I walked down a crowded hallway Friday afternoon, I saw a very attractive young woman coming toward me. Our eyes met for what had to have been a fraction of a second, but in that moment, time slowed down and there didn’t seem to be anybody else in the hallway other than the two of us.

Her blue eyes were warm, intelligent and open. In some way that I can’t explain, I knew what she was unconsciously communicating: “I’m interested in you. I’d like to talk with you.”

The moment was gone as quickly as it arrived, and we were going in opposite directions. The encounter left me slightly shaken and wanting to understand what had just happened.

I was inside a very busy large hospital in downtown Birmingham — it was UAB for any local people who are curious — and I was looking for a specific place where some information was supposed to have been posted. The instructions I had been given were very vague, so I had stopped several times to ask for help from employees.

I put the woman out of my mind and continued looking for what I’d come to find. The odds of me ever seeing her again — just a random stranger among thousands in a hospital — were tiny. So I moved on and figured I’d think about it later. I went back to a lounge next to a cafeteria on the second floor, where I’d been told I’d find what I was looking for.

I suddenly saw her standing alone in that lounge. She was looking at her phone, but she glanced at me several times from across the room.

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I’ve known for a long time that the people who played the crew of the starship Enterprise when I was a small child are getting old, but it still caught me by surprise Monday night to see a picture of a very old-looking Leonard Nimoy with the news that he has been hospitalized for severe chest pain.

When the celebrities of our youth grow old and start dying, we feel pangs of something. Is it regret? sadness? or something else? I’m not sure what to call it, but the feelings are ultimately about ourselves, not about the people who are dying.

James Doohan (Scotty) and DeForest Kelley (Dr. McCoy) are already gone. Nimoy (Spock) and William Shatner (Capt. Kirk) are old men. What does this say about me?

I know it sounds selfish to interpret someone else’s problems this way, but isn’t that natural? I didn’t know any of these people except as actors whose faces and voices were burned into my child brain. They only have meaning as reminders of the little boy who wanted to join them in space — away from the reality that seemed so unhappy down here.

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