By PAT WICK

© Another Day in the Country

My sister walks the county roads bordering Ramona almost every day. She’s usually picking things up — usually trash — but sometimes her walks produce something valuable, like someone stopping to say “Hi” or, as happened recently, a stray kitten.

The minute she heard a frantic “meow” from the ditch out in the middle of nowhere, Jess said, “Oh, no, I’m not stopping to investigate.”

She picked up her pace. And then this streak of brown fur bounded up out of the ditch and onto the road in front of her.

Jess kept walking!

“I’m not going to pick you up,” she said to the kitty who was now running along behind her meowing, “and I’m a long way from town.”

She kept walking and the cat kept following. When she got to city limits, the tiny cat was still following her It had been tagging along for almost a mile, sometimes stopping to hunker down in the middle of the road when she heard a dog bark, but never wanting to lose sight of this human she’d found, and Jess was beginning to fall in love with this courageous, skinny mite-of-a-thing with the scratched up nose.

Just a few days before, Jess had been talking to a friend who is a Rabbi. Even mundane conversations with Victoria turn up interesting topics, and on this occasion she was studying prayer. “You have to be really specific about the things you pray for,” Victoria said.

Specificity worked well for Victoria because she announced she’d just gotten married.

“One day, I told God that the three most important things I wanted in a mate were a similar spiritual belief, musical talent, and love of the mountains.” 

A few days later, out walking, she met a man who lived in her same apartment complex!  A few months after their first encounter they got married.  When Jess told me this story, we laughed and conceded that our lists would be much longer and quite different.

Musing about prayer and asking for things that you want to appear in your life, Jess has a kitten following her home. 

“I don’t want another cat,” she said to the kitten hopping along behind her. “I didn’t pray for a cat, either, but if you follow me all the way home, I might have to reconsider. Perhaps it’s meant to be.”

Long story short, on the way home from picking us up at the airport Jess said, “Well, we have a new member of the family that you are going to meet. I call her Tig because she looks like a miniature tiger.”

Of course, our resident cat, Skeeter, was none too thrilled with this turn of events. Skeeter, whose mother was one of many feral cats in town, has never liked strangers. If someone comes to visit, she makes herself scarce.

“I’m out of here,” she says.

Now, with two almost-teenage boys arriving with me from California, Skeeter headed over to Jess’s house once more, but guess who was there — a scrawny-looking kitten. So, while I had company at my house, Skeeter went to Jess’s house and relished the peace while Tig stayed at my house with the kids.

The kitten loved their company. Not only would the boys play with her, they’d sit still for long periods of time playing on their iPads and she would curl up beside them or right on top of them and purr away the day. This was one lucky cat.

When everybody left to go back to California, Skeeter came home.  To her great consternation, Tig came back, too — after all, Jess works, and you can’t leave a kitten unattended in the house all day alone, so I’m the cat sitter. Skeeter has adopted an air of tolerant disgust at little Tig, who doesn’t know the house rules. When Tig heads for my bedroom, and the very tempting bed — which Skeeter knows is off limits — she follows her. Sitting in the doorway, she watches as if to say, “She’s right over there. Do something! In another minute or two she’s going to be up on your pillow.”

As I sit here at the computer writing, a small furry object jumped up on the chair behind me. She’s settled down for a snooze, curled up against my back. Better than a heating pad, or some vibrating chair, she is soft, warm and purring. For sure, I didn’t pray for another cat in my life, either; but sometimes remarkable things just happen on another day in the country.