I remember it as if it happened an hour ago. It was a mild spring morning, the kind of morning where the brightness of the sun brazenly invades your room and nudges you out of bed to greet it with the same audacity and sense of well being it commands. The air had a fresh, sweet crispness to it that spawned cheerful exclamations from our native feathered creatures while rambunctious squirrels scurried overhead, scratching across our shingled roof, chattering like a group of schoolgirls cheering their favorite football hero to a touchdown.

 Mother was in the kitchen whipping up her concoction of raisins in steaming oatmeal. The aroma permeated through the upper bedrooms and teased my nostrils. I skipped down the stairs and into the kitchen anticipating the first mouthful of my favorite hot breakfast.

 Mother’s face had that clean shine one has after their morning toilet. Her lovely cheekbones seemed to balance her high forehead and when she smiled her hairline lowered.

 ”Shh! Listen!” Mother commanded with the palm of her hand stretched out in my direction.

I stopped in my tracks, quick to obey, and stood as still as she. Somewhere in the distance a series of faint meows echoed. Using our ears as sensors we simultaneously cocked and turned our heads to pinpoint the direction from where the signals were sent, somewhere low in the room. The look on my face evidently verified that, indeed, we both heard muffled and distressed meows. Instantly, Mother opened the lower cabinet doors then paused to listen… nothing. She raced to the stove and quickly opened the lower pan drawer, then several lower cabinet doors. She stood looking around the room, her eyes darting around frantically as the soft cries seemed to grow faint.

 I immediately joined the search and opened the porch door and stepped out calling. “Here kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty. Tabby!” Tabby wasn’t outside. I stepped back in and darted across the kitchen for the cellar door. It must have struck Mother at the same instant because she cut me off as she flew to open the cellar door, and I raced behind her down the stairs.

 The cellar was stocked with a variety of canned goods that aided our survival through the bleak and brutal winters, depending how many lay-offs the auto factory or strikes the unions declared that year. It also housed an empty coal bin, a water cistern, and a monstrous coal burning furnace with inflated steel tentacles that seemed to brace the floor overhead.