Oct. 26--All morning Monday, Charles Morris worried about an aging black cat named Kitty as crews began boarding up an apartment after a fire in a Washington Park three-flat graystone.
"I don't want them to board it up in there," said Morris, 62. "I don't know what to do about that cat."
Kitty was a longtime companion to Josephine Johnson, 89, who was found dead in the first-floor apartment around 3 a.m. after a small fire broke out. Police said she suffered stab wounds as well as burns and were investigating the death as a homicide and the fire as arson.
"She didn't have any enemies," said Morris, who lives in the basement apartment. "I knew Miss Josephine for maybe 15 years. She was a nice lady. She had no children."
After her husband died more than 10 years ago, Johnson began feeding the black cat that wandered the blocks around her home in the 5100 block of South Michigan Avenue. She took the cat inside when the weather turned cold.
"Wasn't long before it was sleeping in her bed," Morris said in the front yard of the three-flat, yelling directions to the boarding crew. "She always had that cat."
Morris said he was alerted to the fire around 2:50 a.m. by his eldest daughter pounding on his bedroom door.
"We had a busy day at church and we came home to rest," he said. "There was a bang on the door. My oldest daughter said, 'Miss Josephine's apartment is on fire.'
"I grabbed Miss Josephine's keys -- because I had a copy of them -- I opened the door, there was smoke, but it wasn't billowing," Morris said.
"I ran through to the kitchen, that's where the fire was," he said. "It looked like it was burning for 10 minutes. It hadn't reached the ceiling."
He opened doors to get the smoke out, and his daughter and a woman who lives on the top floor came up to him and said, "Miss Josephine was on fire."
He said he found her slumped near the side door, embers burning on her chest. "I knocked all that off of her. By that time, the first firemen showed up. They grabbed her and brought her to the front lawn," Morris said.
Johnson was taken to University of Chicago hospital, where she was pronounced dead. A second person, a man in his 70s, was treated for smoke inhalation.
Police said no one was in custody.
Johnson had worked in the medical field, according to Morris. She had been married more than 50 years until her husband died, he said.
Morris said he got to know the couple after doing some work in the building and eventually moved into the basement apartment, where he continued to maintain the building. Johnson's husband "took me under his wing," he said.
Before he died, he told his wife, "You stick with Charles and you'll be OK," Morris said. "That's what she did, she stuck with me. I made a promise."
A neighbor said Johnson took pride in her graystone and was heartened by the improvements in the neighborhood.
"She loved her building," said Barbara Thompson, who lives down the block. "She always talked about the neighborhood back in the day. She loved that it was turning back around."
