Commentaries by Cynthia

I once wrote about the loss of my beloved cat, Chloe. (see http://cynthiaelle.net/node/353 if interested.)

What I didn’t write about was the loss of my daughter’s cat, Murdock, who died several months after Chloe. Because of the grief associated with losing both these cats who had been a part of my life for so long, I told myself that I would not get another pet and go through that kind of pain again.

It has been almost two years since I made that statement, and I recently began reconsidering the words I had uttered in grief. Maybe it was time to get another pet. A week after having this thought, a friend of a friend, Tommie, walked into the office and asked if I would be interested in adopting her two cats. Tommie would be moving soon and would not be able to take the cats with her, so they were in need of a new home. Then Tommie pulled out her mobile phone and clicked on photos of the cats. It was at that moment when the coincidences became so pulling and apparent that I began to sense something very special was happening in my life.

These cats bore a strong if not uncanny resemblance to the ones I’d lost. One had long light gray hair with patches of white fur on its chest; and the other cat was a medium-haired black cat with white feet, a white chest, and white whiskers. The small voice inside me soon spoke up and said: “Take these cats. You were meant to have them.”

At first I agreed to take only one. But that voice kept pulling at me. “Take the other one, too. You were meant to have both these cats. They are yours.”

The transactions were made and I now have both cats in my home. I would soon learn that the resemblances to my former cats extended well beyond the physical. It was with amazement that I watched the gray cat perform a quirky habit I knew all too well as she padded her paw into her water bowl before taking a drink. It was a personal habit displayed often by Murdock. The new black and white kitty likes to sit on the dining room table and drink water out of the kitchen sink; habits I had tried unsuccessfully to break in my dear cat, Chloe.

Despite being in a new environment, both these cats instantly took to my house and to me, as though they knew they were at home. Even their interactions with each other are eerily familiar to the power-plays I had watched between my former cats. The one who looks and acts like Murdock enjoys chasing the cat who looks and acts like Chloe who fights back momentarily before retreating to a safer place. The Murdock look-a-like hangs out in my daughter’s room and sleeps under her bed, just as Murdock had once done regularly; and in following Chloe’s footsteps, the black and white cat has decided that its sleeping place is with me, behind my bent knees.

This is a story that will always be dear to me. Whether you believe in animal spirits and/or reincarnation is of little importance. But one cannot deny or discount the many coincidences that these newly adopted felines have brought into my life. And in the still of the night, all I can do is look up at my ceiling and say, "Thank You, Father. I know I have been truly blessed.”

If there’s a lesson or moral to this story I’d have to say it is this: Never underestimate the power of shared love. We may not fully understand the how’s and why’s of it, but love in itself is never-ending and eventually finds its way back home.