Remembering Butter

This is my late cat Butter, a tabby of questionable character.
She was born at a rural dump and was found under a pile of broken windows at the tender age of four days, eyes closed, ears still folded down. The vet pointed out that she possessed an indomitable will to live, having mewed loudly enough to be heard over the cacophonous racket of heavy machinery and screaming gulls at the local dump. Nose to tip of tail, she fit nicely into my open palm and spent her early weeks in the front pocket of my overalls peering out at the wide world now and again and drinking expensive canned cat milk from a small needle-less syringe.
When she got a little older, the expectant Jack Russell used to welcome her into the whelping box to snuggle up against her taunt sides, but the welcome was immediately rescinded once the puppies arrived to claim their mother for themselves. Too big to return to my pocket, Butter felt she was on her own.
She lived in the farmhouse but at a distance and took to disappearing whenever possible and hissing at guests or positioning herself in advantageous corners to take an experimental swat at passers by in the halls or halfway down the stairs. Her reputation spread. House guests would trade Butter tales, many involving an evil presence beneath the guest room bed, detected too late. Only my daughter could handle the cat and then only briefly, and with careful planning.
The problem of a hostile cat isn't really solvable. Unlike the friendly barn cat, no one wanted to adopt Butter when we moved away from the farm and she was not equipped to stay there either.In the end, she came to live in the new house and after a short period of adjustment, resumed her reign of terror, cornering guests and frightening old ladies.