Goldie on our deck

It is Monday morning and I'm out on my deck.

There's a piece of earth-shattering news.

Last week ended up an emotional disaster and I barely managed any writing because of it.

This week will be better.

I have my cat, Goldie, out with me. She's wearing a halter and is hooked to a leash tied to a leg of the patio table. Goldie has wander lust. She used to go out everyday until five years ago, when she took to adventuring too far from home; that being out of our yard. A stray to begin with, money has been invested in shots and spaying so I had no desire to find her dead on the pavement . . . or not find her at all.

Investment aside, I love the little pest.

Goldie and I found each other the last weekend in August, 2000. I was walking home from the art in the park part of my town's hot air balloon fest when I set my bags down to take a breather. From a pile of dead brush behind the redi-mix office I heard a tiny, high-pitched mew.

"That's a kitten's mew," I said to myself, then mewed back.

A small orange streak shot out of the brush pile, stopped at my feet and then tried to climb my left leg; mewing non-stop the whole time. I picked the kitten up, held it to my shoulder and it snuggled up tight. After a little cuddle time, I held it out to check its "equipment". The little orange tabby was a female.

"Ah!" I told her, holding her up to look into her eyes. "You're an unusual orange tabby. Only 20% of orange tabbies are girl kitties. Did you know that? You're not rare. It doesn't make you worth a lot of money. Just unusual. How would you like to come home with me?"

She was purring and struggling to get back to my shoulder. I took that for a yes. I gathered up my bags and off we went. I asked a couple of boys, who were playing on the sidewalk a block down, if they knew who owned the kitten. They said they had taken her around the neighborhood the day before and no one had claimed her. The kitten snuggled deeper and started to knead my neck.

Not sure what my husband would say to keeping her (we already had three cats although, technically, one was our daughter's) I sat with her on our deck while she guzzled the food and water I brought out to her. There was a Christian Contemporary Music group around at the time named PFR (it stood for "Pray For Rain"). On one of their CDs they had a song, "Goldie's Last Day". The song was about a golden Labrador retriever who has passed away, but I found myself singing the chorus with the words adjusted to fit my situation. The changes are in brackets:

"Goldie's last [first] day. Goldie's last [first] day.
If a picture paints a thousand words,
There's nothing left to say.
Wish I could've been there for Goldie's last [first] day."

The kitten jumped up into my lap.

"Are you Goldie?" I asked as she climbed up to my shoulder and started kneading my neck again.

I took that as a yes.