Well the universe certainly has an odd sense of humor.
Friday, we went to the city and picked up Maynard’s urn to bring him home. We also did the shopping that we had originally planned for Monday when we had to take him in. (There’s a bit of a story around the shopping but I’ll get into that another day…) Everything seemed on track for a “normal” weekend, albeit while missing a member of our family.
Saturday had a pretty chill start – we were both sleep deprived and slept in pretty late. It hadn’t yet been a full week since Maynard passed and we were still hurting. We ended up puttering around and watching some TV for a bit, foraged for dinner, and eventually I settled in to play a video game while my wife was listening to something on headphones.
It was getting late, close to midnight when my wife popped her head in and asked if the game I was playing had cats in it because she heard a cat. I replied that while there were cats in the game, there were none around and the cat I heard I thought was Roscoe, but it turned out she was playing with him at the time so she knew it wasn’t him. I was still engaged with my game and didn’t think much of it, but my wife looked outside to see if one of our neighbors’ cats (usually either Harry or Cosmo) was out there making noise.
“Husband, you aren’t going to believe this,” were the words she hollered. No, it wasn’t one of our regular visitors – it was a tiny black kitten sitting on our porch crying.
Neither of us were really mentally prepared for this. We were still grieving our sudden loss and were not looking for another to fill the void left by his passing. But we couldn’t leave this tiny creature out in the cold so we brought her in to the bathroom, gave her a bath in the sink (she was pretty grubby and pathetic looking), and set up the room for her to stay in. That didn’t work, as she is so small that she just flattened herself down and army-crawled her ass right under the door, much to the chagrin of Roscoe and Pearl, who were/are not pleased about this foreign invader and stomped off to sulk downstairs. We ended up just leaving the door open and let the kitten explore.
Sunday morning I woke with a loud purring in my ear and biscuit making on the side of my face… then came a chomp as it bit my lobe – the kitten was trying to nurse. I moved her but she came right back to my face and started to knead my beard and burrowed her face into my beard and nipped at my chin. It was too early so I moved her down again, but that was a mistake because I inadvertently moved her down onto my bare chest where she promptly latched onto my nipple. There was no falling back asleep after that, so I got up, took her to the bathroom, and gave her more of the soft treat in a tube that we gave her the night before laying back down in an attempt to get at lease a few more hours of sleep.
We contacted neighbors to see if anyone was missing a kitten, but none were. Everyone I spoke to said this was the universe sending us another cat, and to be honest, I had a bit of that sort of feeling when she first arrived. To me, it felt like ghost Maynard saw this poor cat outside in the cold and told her to come to us, and possibly even coached her on how to act for us. There are too many uncanny similarities with how this cat’s behaviors mimic Maynard’s. That first night, the kitten hopped on the bed, marched right up to me and booped my nose before sauntering over and laying in my wife’s lap. Maynard would do the same at night – he’d come up to me first and give me boops (we called them “thank you boops” because he’d always do that after treat time) then go lay with my wife.
It really felt like ghost Maynard told her something like, “These hoomans are good people, they will take care of you. Here’s what they like….”
This morning my wife announced that we were keeping her (though I suspected as much when she brought home a collar and bell from the town run on Sunday) so we need to decide on a name.
I’m leaning towards “Lucretia.”
Song of the day: Lucretia My Reflection by The Sisters of Mercy