My friend Christine had a cat named Fudgy for 17 years. It seemed to me that no one ever loved a cat more than Chris loved hers. When Fudgy died, Chris agonized over whether to get another cat. She didn’t want to be disloyal to Fudgy’s memory.
“It’s a tribute to Fudgy that you’re thinking about getting another cat,” I told Chris. Then I prayed to keep my mouth shut, since occasionally a friend’s advice turns around and bites the advice-giver.
Christine started looking at cats. “Just looking,” she said. And it was a very specific kind of cat she was looking for—a very petite tortoise-shell like Fudgy. She found a Fudgy look-alike on the Internet and went to see it. And there she fell in love with another cat—a sleek black cat named Gigi. It was like one of those movies where the girl is about to walk down the aisle to marry her boyfriend and instead falls in love with the guy who is painting the church.
“A black cat?” I asked.
“But it was so friendly,” Chris said. “It put its paws on me, wanting to comfort me.”
I smiled, thinking of an old saying of my grandmother’s: “Man plans and God laughs.”
Chris and Gigi have been together more than a year now, and again it seems to me that no one ever loved a cat more than Chris loves hers.
