Back in the bad old days of my youth
When I found myself isolated and alone, unemployed... friendless
Had nothing to look forward to
And a body full of pains
I was sitting out in a back shed one day... despairing
How had things come to this I asked myself
And what could I do?
My life had really gone off the rails...
Now I had these two young pet cats 😺
They were my best friends and confidantes
While I'm sitting there... busy despairing
One of the cats comes in and jumps up onto my thigh and quietly just crouches down there
And closes his eyes
It's like he's saying "I'm with you in whatever you're going through, you're very important to me"
It interrupts all my despairing, I smile and think it's rather cute
And then... then the other cat appears, he comes in and he does the exact same thing
He jumps up onto my other thigh and crouches down there and closes his eyes
It's like they were saying "You belong to us, you're our best friend, we don't like to see you unhappy, we're here for you, we're with you in this"
I had to smile, even laugh to myself
I thought it was like God was sending me these animals to cheer me up
To tell me not to give up
That there was still hope in this world/ this life.

The two cats were tomcats
When one of them grew older he went wandering looking for a female probably (wasn't neutered)
He got killed on the road, knocked down
The other developed some kind of mange and would go around crying
In those days people were poor, they didn't spend money on animals
My Dad eventually got sick looking at him and hearing him cry
He threw him in a bag one day and doused him with water
Put some sticks and stones in it and threw him in the ditch (it was cold Winter time)
For the next couple of days and nights you could hear the poor animal crying
Until at last, there was silence
(It was like that scene from the Silence of the Lambs movie
When the young FBI agent recalls her childhood memory of hearing the screams of the lambs).

They were there for me but me, I wasn't there for them.