To be surprised

I am flabbergasted on the daily. If anyone, stranger or friend, had told me in March that I’d be living in social isolation for months, maybe a year or more, well…. we all share THAT experience.

But if that same person had also told me that the universe would deliver unto me a beautiful black kitten whose presence would ease my pain, make me smile, give me new purpose, and otherwise make this whole thing a bit more bearable, I wouldn’t have believed it.

But here I am, sharing my life and my tiny apartment with the delightful creature variously known as Bathsheba Everdene, Jack White, Katniss, and sometimes just “Baby.” She almost literally dropped into my lap. I never planned to have her around. But, OMG, am I grateful that she’s here.

Bathsheba makes me laugh. Her physical presence is comforting. Her affection is rewarding. Her beauty is inspiring.

This afternoon I relaxed with her on my belly; she kneaded and purred and stretched her lanky legs. And I thought, as I have so many times in the months since she came to live with me, “Who knew?” A lifelong “dog person,” I just had no idea what having a cat could mean to me.

I am grateful every moment for so many things in my life, Bathsheba among them. And today, when she curled her tiny head into the crook of my elbow to take a cat nap, I (drifting off myself, to be honest) wondered, “Who knows? What else might be out there, waiting for me to discover its role in my life? What else do I not know?”

Yet.

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