She was my sweet calico kitty, possessing just as many delightful ways as she did multi-colored patterns on her beautiful fur coat. Her four white boots made it all but easy to choose an appropriate name. I loved Miss Boots right from the beginning. Mom and Dad brought her home when she was just a kitten, and she rarely left my side after that day. She slept every night at the foot of my bed.

When Miss Boots was a little older, she would follow me half way to school each day, and then right back home she would go to keep Mom company while I was gone. She made it a point to be sitting on the porch to greet me when I got home from school in the afternoon.

Everybody loved Miss Boots, with the exception of Frank and John Westbrook, who were older boys that lived in the neighborhood. Both of them got BB guns for Christmas, and they delighted in taunting me with promises to use Miss Boots as target practice.

“You better leave me and Miss Boots alone or I’ll tell my Dad!” I yelled, quite confident that the Westbrook boys wouldn’t be a problem after a threat of that magnitude.

One day after school, I was surprised to find that Miss Boots was not sitting on the porch as usual. She wasn’t in the house, so I searched the neighborhood, calling her name, and asking neighbors if they had seen her. No one had. After about an hour of looking, I found her in an empty lot not far from our house. She was dead. Someone had shot and killed my sweet Miss Boots. The pain of losing her was immense for my seven-year-old heart, and I cried for days.

Dad embarked on a personal mission to find out who had done such a horrendous thing, but to no avail. Although they were questioned by their parents and mine, Frank and John Westbrook denied any involvement in the demise of Miss Boots.

It was a long while before I could talk about Miss Boots without becoming emotional. In time, she became a very precious memory.