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In late 2011, I was walking in a neighborhood near the closed hospital. I spotted a small, long-haired calico hunched on the porch of an abandoned house. A water bowl nearby looked empty. I walked up to the porch and filled the bowl with some of the bottled water I was carrying. The cat moved immediately to the bowl and began to drink.

A couple of days later, I noticed the cat on the porch again. She was sitting on the concrete door stoop at the front door, hunched down on all four paws, as though waiting for her owner to let her back in for the night. The cat was very old, I thought, watching how daintily she perched on her feet. She seemed very quiet, like a little old lady, so in my mind, I began to refer to her as “Miss Old.” She had obviously been abandoned when the owner died or moved away.

The following evening, I brought a live trap and a can of tuna. The next day, after work, I took her to the veterinarian who sees my adopted cats.

“This is one old cat,” he told me, assessing her. She was “normal” and “healthy” for her age, a mere five pounds, probably 15 to 17 years old. I brought her home to my house. She would never again be a cat out of doors.

Over the next few weeks, she found her place, but she always remained a little aloof, a dainty, quiet presence. She had that manner of the very elderly, conserving energy for the important things, not worrying about the trivial. Sometimes, I would help her up into my lap while I was working at the computer. She would sigh contentedly, purr a little bit, and fall asleep until I was finished working and needed to move.

Miss Old lived for only another eight months. One evening, I returned from my job, and she was dead in the little nest she had made for herself in my study. Her death was apparently not traumatic; she just seemed to nap and never wake up.