4th of July is officially Squeeker’s ‘dependence’ day. The neighbor cat (who we alternately called Mommy cat or Trouble) had had kittens a few months before – they’d come over to visit the house once or twice. On the 4th of July, I talked Nick into (reluctantly) BBQing hotdogs and hamburgers out on our porch – apparently it’s sacrilege for a real South African to ‘BBQ’ anything (they ‘braii’), especially hamburgers…but I digress.

We had a huge party, lots of food, people in and out and the doors wide open all night. We were zonked and decided to leave the remnants of the party out in the dining room for the night and clean up in the morning. We made sure Trouble and other furballs were out of the house, closed up the sliding doors, and went to bed.

In the morning, we came out to find one full kitten crawling out from under the couch! She had managed to hide away while we were closing up, and must have gorged herself on leftover hotdogs, the dregs of potato salad and hamburger buns to her heart’s content.

From that day on (not surprisingly) Squeekers was a regular at our house. We didn’t want to give her a real name, since she was the neighbor’s cat, so just made a comment on her chatty nature.