I don’t often answer the telephone, but that day I did. Probably most people don’t even have a landline anymore. The landline provides entrance for solicitors, surveyors and prerecorded messages. Sam answers more often than I do. I watch him stand there helpless, listening, then trying to break into the conversation to say, “I’m not interested.” He prefers not to be rude.
Sam tells one solicitor, “I donated to your cause once, and I regret ever doing that. I won’t do it again.” Then he hangs up … nicely.
I prefer to not answer at all so why I answered that day, I don’t know. The caller introduced herself as Genie Hutchison and said, “I read your cat died and I wanted to tell you how sorry I am.”
Those are the best words you can hear when you’ve lost something or someone. There’s nothing else to be said that will make you feel any better. Even so, my heart skipped and I froze a little.
We moved on to lighter conversation, then she said, “I don’t know if you’re ready or not but my daughter, Liz, who lives in Tuscaloosa, is taking care of two abandoned kittens and we were wondering … if you were thinking, maybe, of getting another cat … ”
The conversation trailed off into silence, then “I’m not sure,” I said. “You see, Sam is compassionate but not particularly fond of cats.”
I didn’t tell her that for over two months I had felt depressed, tired and a deep sadness. I asked myself, did I really want to start all over? Jack lived 17 years. In 17 years I’d be, well, I’d be much older.
I gave Miss Genie my email address and suggested Liz get in touch with me and keep me posted on the kittens. Miss Genie said Liz called the kittens William and Harry (English royalty, no doubt), but if I got them I could name them anything I wanted.
Liz sent pictures. The kittens were tiny. She fed them a bottle every three hours. She said, “They were so small at first you could put them on a hot dog bun.”
Still not committed, I inquired the circumstances of their rescue.
Liz explained a neighbor had complained of feral cats. The animal control department did a sweep, not realizing that one of the cats had a litter. She thought the mother cat was probably in a panic trying to move the kittens when she was “nabbed.”
The two newborns were left behind; probably they were less than five days old. They spent the entire night on a stranger’s front lawn.
Rarely do kittens survive such circumstances, but Liz was diligent and now she was offering her charge to me.
And so it was that Harry and William, now appropriately called Wilhelmina, brought much joy and laughter to the Prairie house.
And since Sam is retired, the kittens are great company. Fortunately, Harry and Wilhelmina enjoy the SEC channel, especially “The Paul Finebaum Show,” possibly Harry more than Wilhelmina.
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