A limp greyish mound, lay draped over a ditch’s frozen lip. Painful golden eyes tracked me as I rode by. My pony, Buttons, lowered her muzzle and blew a steaming kiss over the Blue cat. It twitched. I gently placed it in my paper-route sack and let the warmth from Buttons heat the cat through.

At home, my father ordered me to put it in the basement and leave it alone. Let it heal on its own, he said, and I placed it in a box next to the furnace.

Two weeks later, it limped into the living-room and climbed the cat tree I had jerry-rigged.

During the mornings, the Russian would prey outside my father’s bedroom door, and when the door opened, all ritualistic hell broke loose. The cat’s enemy, the belt to my father’s robe, had to die.

One day my father complained of a sore neck. The doctor ordered a heating pad, but the cat had other ideas. It became a limp pile of grey again, but this time draped over my father’s shoulders; its warm purrs healing my father’s sore and frozen neck.

The Russian had defected.