Personal Essays

Our Wish Cat was born sometime in the month of April, probably in a crawl space or an abandoned shed. Somehow he wound up living in an abandoned house next door to a kind-hearted young girl. She took pity on this small, thin homeless creature and began to feed it on her back porch. The little kitten thrived, he loved the little girl and when the girl’s boyfriend came to visit, the little cat gained another advocate. The little girl wanted very much to adopt the kitten, but there just wasn’t room in her household for another animal, so she set about trying to find a home for him. The girl’s boyfriend helped, too, and spread the word among his family members. This being a very small world, after all, the boy’s mother just happened to be Carol’s friend Valerie. Valerie, of course, knew of our interest in adopting a kitten, and e-mailed some pictures of the little waif to Carol. Carol forwarded them to me. There was no turning back now. This was the cat we were fated to have. The possibility of a cat had, with the making of a wish, become a cat indeed. A quintessential cat, as it turned out, a Cat of Wonder, an Ultimate Cat.