Melanie Anne Phillips

We were awoken in the early dark this morning (Saturday), just before sunrise, by the plaintif sound of a cat's mournful whining.  Instantly we leapt out of bed and checked the location of our two cats, both of whom were safely sleeping in the living room. Upon heading back to bed we heard the cry again.  I opened the front door of our second-floor apartment and the cat stopped crying, wherever it was, but I could see nothing.  So, I closed the door.  But while I was in the other room, Teresa opened the door again and here was a small, sleek, solid black young cat, who marched right in the open door. Well, Teresa had to pick him up and put him in the back office before he came in contact with our two, lest he impart some disease or get into it with them. For the rest of the day and well into the evening, we got to know this amazingly gentle soul.  He wasn't hungry, was well cared for, had no fleas and no fear of humans.  Though he also had no collar, he was clearly someon

We were leaving for some errands yesterday and as we drove from our parking space onto the internal street in our apartment complex, we saw a SWAT truck slowly working its way up the street with four combat attired special police units using the truck as a shield. More units were arriving, so we decided to return to the apartment to see what would happen.  The SWAT teams were deploying in areas around an apartment building in our complex next to ours - well, sort of one building over from our end of our building but line of sight. There were troops in the patios on the gournd floor beneath our balcony, and they eventually went upstairs in the building to the side.  Later we learned they had taken over one lady's apartment, turned her couch over and used it as cover to set up and get the suspect in their sights. In fact, when the SWAT truck stopped in position, there were two snipers with their rifles centered on a particular apartment.  We couldn't see the actual apartmen