Riding Shotgun: When the Storm Hits

The hail came out of nowhere.

One minute I was rolling west on I-70 outside Watkins, Colorado in 90-degree heat, and the next the sky turned green and the alert went off and I was pulling onto the shoulder to wait it out. The temperature dropped 35 degrees in minutes. Hail hammered the hood and the windshield like it had a grudge.

And Honey, my big brave Red Heeler who has logged more miles than most people see in a lifetime, crawled under my feet and stayed there.

Not ashamed. Not apologetic. Just done. The storm was too big and her person was right there and that was the only math that mattered.

I sat with my hand on her while the hail bounced off everything and I thought about all the ones who came before her. The ones who rode with me or shaped me or left a mark I still carry. The ones who decided, without being asked, that wherever I was happened to be exactly where they needed to be too.

Ms. E came to me when I was nine or ten. She was a mutt, her mama looked like Benji from the movie and her daddy was some tiny black silky something cute. She had a crooked tail and a sense of purpose that most people never find. She guided lost kittens back to their mothers. She knew where every hidden litter in the neighborhood was and would lead you right to them if you asked. She came home every summer evening smelling like every dead thing and manure pile she could find, and went to bed soaking wet because that was the deal.

She also stole my mother's strawberries, one by one, right off the vine before they could be picked. I watched my mom puzzle over her disappearing garden all summer long and never said a word. I was nine. It was the right call.

I had Ms. E until I was twenty-three. She had a series of seizures near the end, and one day she didn't come back from one. Thirteen years of her and then she was gone. That kind of loss leaves a shape in you.

Leo was an orange and cream male tabby who thought a leather glove was a license to bring out every bit of aggression he had, and would then curl up in your lap and talk to you like you could understand every word. I was young when I had him. I have missed him for thirty years. Some of them stay with you like that.

Maggie showed up on the porch one day with half her tail broken and asked for love. I gave it to her and took her to the vet and three hundred and fifty dollars later I had one of the sweetest cats I have ever known. She followed me everywhere. She sat on the edge of the tub while I bathed. One day I picked her up and set her in the water just to see what would happen. She floated there, calm and a little confused, front paws at the waterline, waiting to see what came next. She never panicked. Never tried to get out. Just floated and trusted me.

She had feline leukemia. I had her for two years.

Lys was something else entirely.

She rode with me in the truck for two and a half years and I have the scars to prove it. She didn't recognize me when I came out of the shower. She had a gift for chaos that she exercised without apology.

The worst was the Texas ice storm of 2021. I had just gotten back from the store, threw my groceries inside, closed the door, and went to help another driver with frozen air lines. When I came back to get a tool I needed, the door was locked. The key was not in the ignition. There was no power to the windows. Through the glass I could see Lys standing on the lock button looking at me like I was the confusing part of this situation.

I called the company. A repair guy was coming but it was going to be a while because every service truck in Texas was already out on calls. I waited in another driver's truck for forty minutes until the knight arrived to break into the castle guarded by the pint-sized ogre. He got the door open. I got my groceries and my keys and my cat, who had not moved from her spot and had no comment.

A different night, a different parking lot, she locked me out again. My hide-a-key was zip tied and I couldn't break it. I spent 45 minutes in the dark finding someone who could help. When I got back to the truck the window was down and Lys was on the roof waiting for me. She had rolled it down herself. My rescuer was no longer needed.

She escaped through the window another time at a truck stop while I was in the store. Scaled the mirrors. Made it to the roof. I came back to find her crouched up there against a wide blue sky, looking down at me like she had claimed the highest point available and was not interested in negotiating.

That is also when I took the photo.

It took me an hour to get her back inside. I didn't have an hour.

I lost her one night on the road. She got out while I was sleeping and found the highway in the dark. That is the one I do not talk about much. But she was mine and I was hers and the cab was very quiet after.

Two months later Tiffany called and said hey, want to go for a ride?

I did not know what I was walking into. I came home with Honey.

She was small enough to fit in one hand and she immediately stole my toothbrush and looked me dead in the eye while she did it. No guilt. No hesitation. Just full commitment to the crime. It took her three years to settle out of puppyhood and there were days I wasn't sure either of us would survive it.

But tonight when the sky turned green and the hail came down and the world got loud and strange, she crawled under my feet and put herself as close to me as she could get. And I put my hand on her and we waited it out together.

That is the whole thing right there. That is what all of them were doing, in their own ways, in their own times. Leo talking to me like I could understand. Ms. E stealing strawberries and rolling in things and coming home every single night. Maggie floating in the bathtub and trusting me completely. Lys causing chaos from the roof of an eighteen wheeler against a sky so blue it hurt to look at.

They were all just trying to be close. Trying to say the thing that doesn't have words in any language either of us spoke.

Honey is still teaching me that. Three years into her settling down she crawled under my feet in a hailstorm and reminded me that brave and scared are not opposites. Sometimes the bravest thing is just staying close to your person while the storm passes.

Somewhere ahead there is a Maine Coon who doesn't know me yet. A windowsill waiting. A new set of stories that haven't happened.

I can't wait to meet him.

Honey rides shotgun on every mile of this road. So do all the ones who came before her.