Food, clothing and other donated items helped our family of nine after our home was badly damaged by a tornado. Somehow our pregnant cat had survived unharmed. That would have been a devastating loss for the kids. I knew because one of the neighbor girls, Gracie, was bereft after losing her new kitten in the storm.
“The babies are coming!” my son announced one evening. We watched six kittens come into the world. One of them stood out. She was angel white, and she quickly became the kids’ favorite.
I invited Gracie to come over to see the kittens. Of course she was no different from my own children: She favored the white one.
When the kittens were about six weeks old, Gracie’s mom gave us a call. “We decided to get another cat,” she said. “Could Gracie pick out one of your kittens?”
“Sure,” I said. I knew which kitten Gracie would want. But the kids had lost so much. I couldn’t ask them to give up their favorite kitten.
I gathered everybody in the backyard. “We’ve been shown a lot of kindness since the storm,” I told the kids. “Now we have a chance to give. Gracie is going to take one of our kittens home….”
“We have to give her the white one,” my son said. One by one, the others agreed.
I’d lost a lot in the tornado, but I still had the best kids in the world.
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