But Sometimes You Get What You Need?
From the time I was about 5, I looked forward to the day that I could adopt a grey kitten of my own that I would call Cassie. I don’t know what put this desire so strongly and specifically into my head, but I thought about it frequently. Each year I grew older, I knew I was a year closer to obtaining my Cassie. After I signed the lease on my first apartment, the first thing I did was go right down to the humane society. I scanned the dirty room full of cats until I focused in on one itty-bitty grey kitten that fit the image in my mind. As I started playing with her, I quickly found she wanted nothing to do with me. I kept picking her up and trying to get her attention, but she was really more interested in other things in the room.
At the same time, a slightly older kitten, a cream tabby that had already lost its early baby fur, was desperately trying to get my attention. She nuzzled me and rubbed my legs and kept crawling into my lap. I made one last attempt to make the grey kitten notice me, but she didn’t. “Okay” I said to the cream tabby. “I’ll think about it.” As I went to exit the room, the tabby followed me to the door. When I shut the door behind me, she jumped up into the window and had both paws and her little face pressed against the glass, watching me go and mewing.
My heart stopped. She was my Cassie. I went back and filled out the paperwork to take her home, and we have been inseparable ever since. I’ve never seen a cat more attached to somebody. When I go away on business, she howls at my husband as she looks for me. When I don’t feel well, she lays by my side. Whenever I leave the room, she follows. No, she’s not the grey kitten I visualized almost my entire life. She is better.
This may seem like a poor comparison, but my experience finding Cassie showed me that sometimes things are better when life chooses for us rather than the other way around. I wonder what life will choose for me on this journey, and I can only hope that it will be better than anything I could have imagined for myself.
7 comments:
What a beautiful post. I love cats too, but yours sounds very special. Isn't it wonderful to be able to take such an important lesson away from an experience like that, and that you were open enough to other ideas to see that this cat was even better? I just really like this post! Have a good weekend!
This is an amazing post. You described exactly what I hope for so well.
I love my cats too. I have had many special ones in my life and they really can be the best companions. :)
Precious story! HUGS to you! I feel the same way about my dog. Crazy how I compare my dog to my friends baby. But I just can't help it.
What a sweet story! Animals really have that "sixth sense" sometimes, and know just how we want to be comforted sometimes.
Emmie - What a great post. I ttoally agree - what you get is not always the vision you had, but it doesnt mean its worse. Just different. And probably righter than what you imagined.
Oh, Emmie! That was so awesome. {{hugs}} to you and Cassie!
I completely believe that animals pick their people. That's how it went with our two cats, for sure. Our girl-cat is the most memorable because she showed up at our house during a big thunderstorm. She was howling outside the door, even louder than the thunder. When we opened the door to see what was going on, she just ran right inside the house and started chowing down on our boy-cat's food. (He was not amused, but we were!)
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