BLACK CAT SECRETS

Today I finished the timeline of Augusta's life for the book of which her life story forms the framework.  Coming to the end was not easy--I can't help reliving it.  This is the last picture we have of her, taken in Montana on July 29, 2010, a little longer than a month before she died.  Photographs of black cats usually don't have much to tell, but in this one--with Elizabeth's long late-afternoon shadow falling across her and the sunlight reflected from the bright white wall--you can see, if you look closely, that like many another black cat Augusta wasn't really quite black: Her tail was actually striped.  Like many another, she had secrets.