Elijah Brings Me a Gift

Elijah is my new best friend--my new best male friend, and I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm his best friend, too.  You're thinking, "Aha, at last the widow of nearly eight years has a boyfriend."  I do, but he's not what you're thinking.  Elijah is a cat.

He must have belonged to someone at one time because he's been neutered, but now he just hangs out in the neighborhood.   Every now and then he used to stroll over to my house and this happened frequently after my daughter accidentally left some cat food on the patio.  After that, he dropped by more often.

On Passover, near the end of the seder, we poured the traditional cup of wine for Elijah the prophet, who is supposed to visit every Jewish home during the seder and take a sip of wine.  Just as my granddaughter got up to open the door for Elijah, a little gray figure appeared in the doorway.  The cat!  After that, what else could we name him?

Because I'm a softy, I started feeding Elijah and now he knows my schedule.  Every morning he appears at the back door just as I come into the kitchen to feed my two cats and I give him a handful of dry cat food.  Every evening around dinner time he's back again, because that's when Toby, my tuxedo cat, gets a pill mashed up in a spoonful of baby food and Tiki, the tabby, gets a treat.  Elijah waits hopefully at the door until I've fed my cats and then he gets another handout.

Lately, if he's around when I go outside, he rushes over to rub around my legs and meows until I  pet him.  And I guess he decided it was time to show his appreciation in a more memorable fashion. The other day I looked out my window to see him parading across my patio with a  dead squirrel.  A very big dead squirrel. How does one handle an unwanted gift?  What would Miss Manners say? I'm sure Elijah wanted to share this prize with me, but when I saw him...and it..I let out such a shriek that with the squirrel still in his mouth, he ran off. 

I don't know what he did with it, but it wasn't in my yard or my neighbor's and I was certainly relieved.  Perhaps he took it to his second best friend.  Anyway, he hasn't brought me any more gifts and I hope he understands that he doesn't have to repay my charity, just enjoy it.

This picture is not Elijah, but it's as close as I could get on Google images.