For the love of a cat

She lived in a cemetery up the street, our Boston year, and then one night, during a thunderstorm, she was at our back door. Our mother left bowls of milk on the stoop until the bowls were brought inside, and that is how this calico became our cat, the only pet I ever had. I was in third grade then, and she lived until I was 25. I don't ever remember her slipping away inside the fog of disappointment or the presumption of self importance.

"You should have a pet," a friend told me the other day, and I wondered why she said it, what about my life seemed hollow or absent. Then I remembered the days when Colors would claw into a tree and leap to a gutter and climb in my second-floor window, just to see me. I remembered holding her in my arms, and doing nothing but that, and feeling happy.

I'll be in the Big Apple tomorrow on client work. If I don't have time to post before I dash off for an early train, imagine me imagining you.