DOMINO WAS NAMED for the black spots on his white front paws and the white spots on his black hind paws. He was adopted from a local barn when I was seven years old. I held him in my lap during the drive home, wrapped in a blanket. Stricken with pneumonia, he was thin, and his eyes and nose were runny.

Weeks later, newly healthy, he bounded about with relentless energy. Though we bought him plenty of toys, especially to celebrate his first Xmas, Domino most liked to play with crumpled-up balls of paper or discarded bottle caps. He was especially a happy kitten on Xmas morning, when wads of wrapping paper and bits of coloured ribbon were scattered everywhere.

He enjoyed such human delicacies as sour cream and onion chips, cheesies, and ham rinds, and would sneak his little sniffing nose right up to the mouth of someone eating something that perked his interest. He was also in the habit of pulling the fur out of his front legs in clumps.

I immediately lost all composure when I received word of his passing. Although I was devastated, deep in my heart I wasn't shocked, because he was thirteen years old. I hoped that he had slipped away painlessly in his sleep, in a warm sunbeam on the porch. But that was not to be.

Actually, my father and my youngest brother had spotted our poor cat in the dirt shoulder of the road near our home. His mouth had bled, and his handsome purple flea collar had popped off and landed several feet away. The impact of being struck by a car broke his neck.

I was, and am still, shocked, appalled, outraged, and deeply saddened that, because of a careless motorist who hit an animal and fled the scene, our family was robbed of its newest addition—a beautiful creature with a slightly crooked tail, a nick in his right ear, and a fleck of brown in one eye. Our home has truly been left with a gaping void which once he filled. There will never be another Domino.