July 2010 – August 11, 2026

Ellie Mae Clamcat came to us early in November 2010 as a starving, stray kitten.

I was sitting outside the front door on a bench and sorting through magazines and catalogs while the cleaning ladies worked inside. A scrawny gray kitten with a white chest and white boots wandered over and mewed insistently. She was clearly hungry. Naturally, I went inside and brought her back a bowl of milk. She slurped it up immediately. Then I went inside and opened a can of tuna and brought back some tuna water with a few chunks of fish. She lapped that up without hesitation.

Then she walked over to the bench and meowed again. She looked up at me expectantly. I leaned over and scooped her up into my arms. That was exactly what she wanted. She got cozy on my lap and started to purr. She had a very sweet face and nuzzled her head into my stomach. By the time the cleaning ladies left, I was stretched out on my back, and she was dozing on my chest as we took a nap together.

That was how she came to adopt me. She just jumped right into my heart, curled up, and never left.

When I brought the kitten inside and showed her to Dave, he said she was obviously somebody’s pet and that I should try to find the owner. Fine, I said, but she has to spend the night.

So off he went to Trader Joe’s. He came home with canned cat food, a bag of litter, and a scratching post for the floor, built out of corrugated cardboard and labeled a Double Wide by Trader Joe’s. He also dug out a litter box we still had from our previous cats, Lucy and Alice.

I’m not sure where she slept the first night; probably somewhere in the family room.

The next day, I put her in a carrier and drove around the neighborhood. I showed her to anyone I ran into, but nobody recognized her. Then I took her down to our vet in Alamo to see if she was chipped. She was not, but Dr. Sexton said she had a bad respiratory infection and gave her a shot. He estimated that she was four months old (born in July). He also told me she was a week away from starvation.

“You saved her life,” he told me.

We happened to have my niece Erin and her friend Christine coming from Missouri to visit the next day. As a result, I really didn’t have time to do much more in the way of finding her owners.

She did seem to be someone’s pet, not a feral cat, because she wasn’t any good at hunting and had gotten so thin. But, to be honest, I had no interest in finding her mystery owners, if they even existed. I decided they were not very good owners if they let her get out.

I doubt she had gone far from home if she ran away, and I didn’t see any signs for a missing cat in the neighborhood. In any case, nobody was looking for her, and we had her, so “finders’ keepers.”

My own theory is that she ran away on moving day. I’d read that it was a common phenomenon for cats to escape and get lost on moving day. They might hide nearby but be afraid to come out.

There was a recession going on in 2010. People had lost jobs and were selling houses and moving away from the Bay Area, so maybe that’s what happened.

While Erin and her friend were visiting, we all tossed around names for our new kitten. I was in favor of Boots or Nancy Sinatra because of the kitten’s distinctive white boots. Plus, I have a special affinity for Nancy Sinatra. I’ve dressed up as her several times for Halloween and once for my sister-in-law’s bachelorette party.

But Dave came up with Ellie Mae Clamcat, in honor of the TV character Ellie May Clampett, the sweet, animal-loving daughter on The Beverly Hillbillies. The actress who played her, Donna Douglas, was well-known as an animal lover in real life.

I had to admit that I liked the name. It was funny and clever, and it seemed to fit our kitten, who was very sweet, just like the TV character. So, I relented and let Dave name her.

I knew Ellie Mae would always be MY cat in any case. The least I could do was let Dave choose her name.

I have no idea why we wrote her name as “Mae” instead of “May.” The spelling just seemed right for our little girl kitty.

Because I was the one who took her back to the vet for her first vaccinations and to get spayed, she took on the official and full name of “Ellie Mae Clamcat Gabert.”

Her last day on earth, at the vet’s office, she once again sought my lap for comfort. Dave and I had her on a cat bed on a couch between us, but she kept trying to climb into my lap, so we shifted the cat bed onto my lap.

The vet kneeled to give Ellie Mae the injections and then checked her heart with a stethoscope.

“She’s gone,” the vet said quietly, looking straight into my eyes. “Do you want a few minutes with her?”

I nodded yes through my tears.

Dave patted my hand, which was on her back. Ellie Mae lay on her side and her eyes were half-opened, which the vet had told us was normal. Her ears still stuck straight up.

I stroked her fur, and the warmth seemed to leave her body quickly. I felt along her tail, which I had held thousands of times over the years. But instead of feeling alive, it was already stiff and lifeless.

That’s when I knew she was truly gone.