Coyote eats cat.

The dogs were barking frantically at the window overlooking the marsh. (Maggie, the Great Dane, Gracie & Hutch, the toy poodles). My husband peered over his newspaper and looked out. "It's a deer," he said. I got up and went over and thought I made out a coyote hunched over a dark mass. It was 7 am and still dim. "No, it's a coyote," I replied, "And I think he's standing over something big and black. Is Niger out?"

Niger is our 16 pound black cat. "Yes," answered my husband.

Just then, the coyote, disturbed by the dogs' continued barking, picked up the "thing" and trotted casually off into the reeds. I can still picture the carcass dangling limply from his jaws, seemingly weightless. But it's the blackness that's so vivid. It's as if it were spotlit.

The next little while is a blur. I was in shock, half in denial that it wasn't our beloved Niger. My husband and I did an inventory of what else it could be. Cheeks, the cat next door? He has a lot of white which would have been visible. A 'possum? They're beige. A skunk? Not likely. Besides, like Cheeks, the white would have shown. A squirrel? Squirrels are small and grey. A raccoon? Likely, there'd have been a lot of noise and they aren't really black.

We knew. Niger was gone.

I kept watching for him to come around all morning, hoping against hope. He was an in-out, in-out sort of cat. I even imagined his somehow escaping the coyote and crawling home wounded and my taking him to the vet and getting him all sewn up. But he never showed up. Today it is a week since the horrific incident. There's been no sign of him.

Niger was an extraordinary cat. I've had more than a dozen cats in my life, some really great ones, like Mumbo, the insatiable Tabby, Cinder, the Yukon survivor, Yo-Yi, the charming Siamese. But Niger was definitely the most outstanding. He was an aristocratic hybrid: part Seal Point Siamese, part red Abyssinian. He was elegant and almost massive, with a noble head topped by oversize ears. When he was a kitten, he was all ears. He appeared black, but in sunlight, you could see he was actually a luxurious deep red-brown. On his chest was a slash of white, like the shirt front of a tuxedo.

What set him apart, though, was his interdependence with us. Aloof, independent, remote, solitary: none of those describe how he related to humans. No, he was gregarious, affable, sociable, companionable often to the point of being insinuating. With everyone. Family members, visitors. He conned neighbours. No amount of affection was enough. He'd butt and butt with his beautiful head against your chin if he was on your lap. He'd lick your cheek or nose or ear. He'd weave in and out of your your legs, tripping you, when he was on the ground, which he'd have preferred not to be. One of my daughters used to carry around all twenty pounds of him, (he'd lost some weight recently), on her shoulders, hunched like an old woman.

One of the things I loved best about him was seeing him come bounding towards me when I called him, no matter how far away he'd been or how long I'd been calling. He ran smoothly, surely, with great strides, like a panther and if a cat can be said to show joy, he was always joyous when he arrived.

We'd had him for eleven years and he'd adapted to a lot of different places and circumstances. He came from Montreal at eight weeks and went immediately to Connecticut where he met our first Great Dane, Lily and our three other cats, Yo-Yi, Mitsu and Huey Lewis. He bonded immediately with Lily, who could have chomped him with one bite but instead they played and slept together. He has lived in a big old house in a small town on Lake Ontario in Canada. He's lived in a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Oak Park. He's lived in a townhouse on busy La Salle in Old Town in Chicago. Once he spent a month by the sea in New Brunswick, having travelled for three days to get there, never leaving the car. Many times he rode back and forth in that car, free, on the eleven hour drive from Chicago to our house in Canada.

And always he's been a prowler, a hunter, a lucky survivor, ever loyal to wherever he was living. Did I worry about him when he was out? Though I'm normally a hand-wringer, I somehow always trusted Niger would be OK. That'd he'd come home. And he always did, every night adding satisfying weight against my body in bed.

I didn't really know about the coyotes when we moved to this house on the Blackwell Forest Preserve. Or rather, I knew they were there, but my sense of them was that they're scared of humans and therefore keep their distance. But then I heard their menacing howls nearby. And I saw them. Because they fearlessly began to appear on our property too close to the house. I knew they were wily predators and I began to hear stories about stolen cats and small dogs. Naively...no, not naively, cavalierly, foolishly I believed Niger was somehow immune. That intelligent and aware as he was and given his feline skills, like climbing a tree, he'd escape the coyotes' jaws. And for almost three years he did.

And then last week, he didn't. I think he must have been hunting the mice in the grasses along the marsh and that a coyote was lying in wait, silently, with the patience of the ages. The coyote pounced before Niger even knew what hit him. I'd always imagined, (when I did imagine it), a savage scream. But we heard nothing. That's why I think the kill was instant: a grab on the neck, a hard shake and it was over.

My grief could, (and maybe should) be brushed with guilt but it isn't. Perhaps it will be later as I more and more contemplate the event. Now I'm still quite numb. I've barely cried. When I was driving to Chicago in the storm yesterday morning to pick up a new Siamese kitten, Andrea Boccelli on the CD player finally brought tears.

The thing is, Niger had always been an outdoor cat, an adventurer, from the time he was quite small. Once, at about 12 weeks, he caught a snake. He was a creature of nature, primal and substantial, like his ancestors. That's what made his needy extroversion so remarkable. Keeping him indoors would have been imprisoning him. Anyway, I don't think he'd have stood for it. He was highly vocal and could sustain a plaintive wail like a rock star.

The only disaster he ever encountered, (and it was horrifying) happened when he was sleeping on top of the open garage door and my husband, not knowing, closed the door. Niger slid down to the opening and was caught between the door and the frame, his legs hanging down the outside. Then he was screaming. We were terrified to either open or close the door further, fearing to crush him more. I think we decided to open the door a little and that freed him. He had a few injured nerves in his spine and his back legs were wonky for awhile, but he recovered completely. He was ever fearful of garage doors opening and closing.

But he wasn't fearful of anything else. In fact, he was fearsome, especially towards other cats, a fierce defender of his territory. Much as I wanted to, I could never have another cat. I tried and Niger attacked.

His latest best friend was our second Great Dane, Maggie. For her, he would roll over and purr and prod her muzzle while she nibbled up and down his body, as if he were a cob of corn.

Some pets invade us in the finest sense with their intelligence, their animation, their sensibility, their ability to connect in ways that offer not only pleasure but solace. They have a gift, an infinite capacity both to give and receive love. They offer the most notable characteristics of their species, but they also seem to take on the best of what we value as humans. Niger was one of those.

Our new Siamese kitten, called Hu Jin, which is Chinese for gold tiger, will have his own special qualities I know. And though I am so glad to have him, from the deepest part of my being, I hate the reason that I do.