The story below is a preview from our March/April 2016 issue. For the full story Subscribe today, view our FREE interactive digital edition or download our FREE iOS app!
Like her owner, Dolly the cat exuded traits tied to the land where she lived: a little reclusive, reluctant to accept help, determined to make her own way to the end.
Neil Sagebiel
The task of feeding Dolly came from my friend Eric. I don’t consider myself a cat person, even though my family has two cats. But Dolly was Maude Shelor’s cat, and Maude Shelor was a member of our church. It was an easy decision.
Deep into her eighties, Maude had been ill, hospitalized and near death. Instead, she hung on, recovered and took a room at the South Roanoke Nursing Home, where she would live the rest of her days. Maude left behind an empty home and an outdoor cat in Floyd. Both were dear to her, but life alone in the Blue Ridge Mountains was no longer an option for the former high school science teacher, retired director of social services, mother, grandmother and widow.
Eric asked me to feed Dolly and make sure she had fresh water. She likes to be brushed, he told me. (There was an old discolored brush on a bench behind the house.) After Eric returned from wherever he had gone, he asked if I would take turns feeding Dolly, one week on, one week off. Then I took over, all weeks on. About two years of caring for Dolly stretched before me, although I didn’t know it at the time.
Nearly every day I made the short trip to Maude’s place south of town on U.S. 221, a national highway on which if you kept driving past her colonial-style home and followed the road until it ended would take you all the way to the Florida Panhandle. From the stoplight in town—there’s only one in Floyd, Virginia—it’s three miles to Maude’s. You head south on West Main Street and go past Food Lion on the right and Jessie Peterman Memorial Library on the left, past the laundromat and West End Market and past Slaughters’ Supermarket. This might take two minutes. Floyd is a small town. Even with all the changes in recent years, it’s still small and probably always will be.
Now you are out in the country, the up-and-down-and-all-around terrain of the Blue Ridge. The road winds through a wooded section and makes a sharp right before heading up a rise and into an open area. After cresting the hill, you pass a small, white, wood-framed church and follow a straight stretch of road for the next mile. This is noteworthy because “straight” and “road” are rarely used in the same sentence in this county of 15,279 people.
Down on the left, opposite a small used car lot, sits the Shelor house. Maude’s two-story home is white with black shutters. The colors are faded, but with a little effort you can picture this family home with a generous front lawn in its earlier splendor. Tall pines and a split-rail fence border the property. A roughly paved driveway crosses in front of the house and bends right, ending to the left and rear of the house. There are two outbuildings: a little crescent-shaped barn with rusted tools and farm implements and a small house used for storage. Beside it stands an aluminum structure where Dolly ate, drank and sought shelter from the weather.
Often times Dolly would appear, meowing, as soon as I got out of my 1996 Ford Explorer. Her medium-haired coat was a mixture of gray and brown, with a hint of yellow. She was small and skinny, an outdoor cat for all seasons. I would talk to her as I dished out wet and dry food and drew fresh water from the spigot. She talked back, meowing insistently. I would scratch behind her ears and sweep my hand across her back and tail. Sometimes I brushed her, but not nearly enough.
Other times she wasn’t there when I rolled up the driveway. “Dolly! Dolly! Dolly!” I’d yell over and over again. Does anyone know where cats go?
A few days could pass without seeing Dolly, and I would worry. Meanwhile, the food would slowly disappear. She’s still here, I’d think, or maybe I’m feeding a skunk or a possum. Then Dolly would appear. “Meow! Meow! Meow!”
It felt lonely out there: a big empty house, a cat and not much else. Some days cows would gather at the barbed-wire fence behind the house. They’d look at me like cows do, as if I were from another galaxy. I’d jump and make a loud noise—“Woo!”—and they’d turn and hurry away. I laughed at their reaction and my silliness.
Sometimes I looked in Maude’s back window. There were items on tables, dishes on the kitchen counter, furnishings and other trappings of home life, as if someone was still living there. I almost expected a person to walk around the corner, switch on a light and wave to me looking in the window, but, of course, no one ever did. The house was empty; its family had left long ago. Only the cat remained, and she lived outside, roaming the yard, outbuildings and perhaps the neighboring fields.
Two things there are a lot of in these parts: deer and Shelors. I wouldn’t want to count them.
Maude was a Shelor through marriage, of course. Her maiden name was Boyd, another common name in Floyd. She was married for 53 years to Henry B., as he was often called. Henry B. died before we moved to Floyd, so I never met him. But I knew him by the reputation he left behind, and I was told he built the outdoor brick barbecue area behind our house in town. I mentioned it to Maude at least once, and she nodded and said that sounded right.
Fact is, my family lives in a Shelor house, built circa 1953 by P.L. and Pauline. We’re the second family and the first not named Shelor to reside in this 60-year-old brick home near the elementary school. When folks ask me where I live, I often say Pauline Shelor’s house. Like Maude, she was the last person to live in her family’s house before going to a nursing home in North Carolina. It makes perfect sense to say we live in Pauline’s house because this is the South, and because no one knows us the way people know Shelors, who have lived in these mountains for more than two centuries. We’ve barely been here a moment, a scant dozen years.
Maude was doing well at the nursing home in Roanoke. Yes, she had gotten sick and nearly died, but it wasn’t her time. Nor was she coming back to Floyd, her son, Allan, told me. South Roanoke was her new home.
It was strange to feed a cat whose owner would never return. I wondered if Dolly needed a new home. Allan helped me understand why Dolly would always be Maude’s cat, even though she was absent. When he occasionally brought his mom to Floyd, Dolly was a highlight of her visit. It helped her feel connected to the old place, he said. Allan always thanked me for looking after Dolly. I always felt embarrassed by his graciousness.
I thought about how much I saw Maude’s cat and how little I saw Maude. At times, I felt guilty. I stopped by the nursing home one day when I was in Roanoke and found Maude’s room. She was asleep. I didn’t want to disturb her. I never went back.
Fall gave way to winter, and I kept driving out to Maude’s to feed Dolly. It was colder than normal with snow and ice on the ground and no school for long stretches. I worried about Dolly when the snow was knee high and the temperatures stayed in the single digits and teens. Fortunately, thanks to Eric, the water dish had a heating element so the water wouldn’t freeze. Still, I wondered if Dolly would make it through those severe days in February and early March. I kept telling myself she was tough, like Maude.
One day I’d had enough. I decided to bring Dolly home and put her in our basement until the weather improved. Twice I tried to get her in the car, holding her in one hand and opening the car door with the other, and both times she escaped and ran away. Dolly wasn’t leaving her home.
Dolly possessed a deep resolve, like her owner. They wore it like a birthmark or a tattoo. This is a defining trait of mountain people and their animals. All Dolly needed from me was a little food, water and, if I took the time, a few strokes behind the ears.
The long icy winter faded and Dolly greeted another spring. “Meow! Meow! Meow!”
One day I got a call from Cindy, a family friend who took care of Dolly when I was away. She saw a cat beside the road near Maude’s house. She suspected the worst but hoped she was wrong.
I climbed into my Ford Explorer and headed to Maude’s. Across from the car lot, a small cat laid still in the dirt on the highway’s shoulder.
I buried Dolly on the eastern edge of Maude’s yard a short distance from the small barn. My wife and daughter joined me as I scattered wild flowers on the grave and said a few words about her. I don’t consider myself a cat person—and Dolly was never my cat—but I had grown fond of her and could still hear her meow after she was gone.