Priscilla The Cat – Yowling

“Priscilla” the cat came with the little mobile home I lived in for the last three months of my licensed practical nursing program.

The old fifty foot long trailer sat in between the train tracks and the Thompson River about 25 km from the downtown core of Kamloops, BC. I stayed there for free (thank you Sherrylynne) when the cat’s owner went away to work up north. I’m glad it was summertime because the little place was worn out and would have been no better than a thin blanket on a chilly night. Still, it wasn’t ideal because the two air conditioners sitting in a window at each end sweated and worked overtime, only dropping the temp inside by a few degrees.

I couldn’t complain because the brown waters of the lazy Thompson River were the mere width of a dirt road away. In the shade of a big weeping willow I spent afternoons lazing on a blanket reading a text-book or completing an assignment. The nearest neighbor was a kilometer away but I wasn’t lonely. I had old Priscilla’s creaky yowl to keep me company and when a heavy freight train rumbled past a few meters from the rear bedroom window the insects and rodents living in and under the trailer were shaken into motion, and took a while to settle again after the train’s passing.

You’d think that run-down trailer and a cat that looked like it had been dead, buried and then dug up again would be creepy, but strangely enough the summer of 2007 was the most peaceful since Nick’s death. I guess the moral of this story is we can’t judge anything’s character by its outer appearance.

Sweetheart travelling between the river and the trailer