She walked straight into my heart. Didn’t stop to knock on the door or nudge the entrance with a tentative paw. She was 100% trusting from first sight. Like in the “Cat Wings” series of Ursula K. LeGuin that I read with my daughters, she knew she had found her “kind hands.” They were, and are, my hands. But she is gone now.

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, a smallish gray tiger cat showed up at my door. There are outdoor cats in the neighborhood but this was a stranger. I sat on my stoop and she came right up to me: Pet me, pet me!  So I did. That was when that love thing started. I have never known such a calm cat right off. I wanted to know her sex so I just turned her over, no complaints from her. I could pick her up any and all ways that I wanted to. That first night, I didn’t put out food, didn’t want her to stay with me if she had a home to go to, though she looked too thin. I put out fresh water and went off for the evening. When I came home late that night, she was curled up on my doormat and was still there in the morning.

Well, so much for “never feed a stray.” We she hungry and she wasn’t leaving, so I brought some dry food outside to her. This not-in-any-way-feral cat ate from my hand. Little handfuls, many, many handfuls, her carefully licking my palm clean and then going off to take her bath on the sidewalk. This became our routine, many times a day. She would be waiting for me if I had been away, or it was morning, or would even come when I called. Since she was always sleeping on my doormat, I put out a basket with a fleece throw blanket in it, and unlike all cats I have ever known, who disdain being giving a sleeping spot, she would curl up in her basket to sleep. Since I have two cats, I couldn’t just bring her in. She had to remain outside.

I went into overdrive to care for her, try to find her people (what in the world could have happened that this love of a cat was lost or abandoned??), try to find her a new home. Notices in the paper, on the web, on utility poles, on Facebook. I took her to the vet to see if she had a microchip, but no luck with that. Emails, phone calls, including an appointment at Dakin Animal Shelter. They book several weeks out, so I did that right off. The woman asked if I had named her and I said nooo (as in, of course not, one doesn’t name a stray) but if I had named her, I told her, it would be Molly. Hence, my stray had a name.

On Day 9, there was violent weather predicted overnight and I got frantic. Her sleeping basket was outside, under a small roof, but all sides open to the weather. I had to give her a dry place to sleep but didn’t know how to do it. Wild rains, high wind warnings, lightning, my baby was in danger of more than just being wet. I called the elderly woman who was intending to take her the following weekend, asking if I could bring her over right then. I had so counted on this woman, but she had changed her mind, completely, she really wanted a kitten, not this young cat. I admit that I wasn’t dealing with this calmly, especially after that phone call. Molly had been trusting me to keep her safe and I didn’t know how to do that. I ended up rigging my inside staircase to be a refuge for her, with the door ajar (an old pair of shoes stuffed under the door in order to keep the door partway open), her basket inside but she having access to go outside for kitty-needs. I also didn’t want her howling if I locked her in and freaking out my  two cats who were on the other side of the upstairs door. I set out her water bowl and just a small amount of dry food. I feared having someone uninvited, like a skunk, come in to eat from her bowl. Her preferred way to eat remained for me to sit on the bottom step, she gently walking onto my lap, and eating out of my hand, always licking my hand clean when she was done.

By this time, obviously, if I couldn’t find her humans, I wanted to keep her. I do understand that she was, in her own catty way, a replacement for my boyfriend who had moved out months before. While I love my two cats like crazy, this was new love, and she needed me, and I am a sucker for being needed by someone who curls up in my lap and purrs, holding on with her front paws, gently but securely, her claws latched onto my pants leg. How could I resist? Why should I resist?

Then came the discussions with my landlord. I don’t want to be too public about this. Suffice to say that I am no longer on speaking terms with my landlord, who I thought was also my friend, for 9 years. He drew an arbitrary line in the sand: two cats yes, three cats no.

I got her an appointment at a different shelter, for the next day, instead of waiting another 2 weeks to go to Dakin. I was spent. My heart was being torn out of me, knowing this little love was leaving, and I couldn’t stand making more calls, sending more emails, with hopes and dashed hopes for either owner or adoptive family. My own life had been on hold and I was about to come apart at the seams. Her last night, I brought her bed up to the top of the stairs, to the little landing. I created a makeshift small bed for myself next to hers. We spent most of her last night together, though I admit, when she went for a walk outside at 1:30 AM, I went in to my own bed. I hadn’t actually managed to sleep.

Molly’s half hour drive to the Westfield shelter was, well, loud. My sweetest kitty was put in a cage there, of course, and she was pissed off. I couldn’t hold her to say good bye, not with her actually growling, but I know she had already eaten something; she would be ok. I debated about permanently giving up my couch blanket, the one she had been sleeping on, but yes, I left it with her, in the cage, and it was the right thing to do. This no-kill shelter is an amazing, loving, generous place and Molly will find a good family. I know that. But my heart hurts.

I mentioned this boyfriend who left me a few months back. I am healing, definitely, but healing is a process, it takes time. I have felt like I was healed enough to be open to making new friends, even keeping my eyes open toward flirtation, but the power of the emotions that Molly brought out in me showed me something different. I think, looking back, that my openness was superficial, perhaps intellectual. I had said that the summer had been for mourning and now that it is autumn, I would be moving on. Maybe those were just words. Molly cracked me wide open, for real, no fooling around. She loved me and needed me and trusted me and to tell you the truth, I loved and needed and trusted her. Though I would have been fine if she had taken off of her own accord and maybe found her way home, I would put on the outside light at night and look for her in her basket. She would look up at me from her basket on the doorstep. I was thrilled to come home and have her come charging out from the bushes, meowing her greeting. She had become my cat.

It has been inordinately painful to have her gone. I picture her in a cage and start to cry, even though I try to see her curled up in her blanket in that cage. I had photos printed up and have them around my apartment. It had been hard to take her picture because she kept crawling into my lap. Such a sweetheart. Her pictures are not there to mourn, though. They are there as a celebration. I am celebrating how deeply she made me feel, how deeply she connected me to my own core of feelings again, how, perhaps, she has opened me to love again. Yes, furry four-leggeds are easier to relate to than two-leggeds, especially the male of our species, but this is step in the right direction, furry or otherwise.

I want to add that I met many wonderful pet rescuers along the way. This is from one of them to me:

You did everything in your power to ensure she was fed, sheltered and ultimately protected.

As you know, sometimes the greatest act of love for these wonderful creatures involves letting them go.

You have given her permission to move on towards her new life — even if it meant leaving you behind.

Everyone in rescue has a story about a wonderful animal they loved, but whom they let go, to find their forever home.           ~~from Michele

Run forward,

the way will spring open to you.

~~Rumi