08/15/2025
Here I am, eating oatmeal and crying into my bowl. My house is full of fosters and the adult “rejects” no one wants to adopt because they’re not tiny, purring kittens anymore. I know I’m not the only rescuer who keeps the ones others pass over, the mommas, the seniors, the shy souls unused to human touch. And yet, there’s nothing more heartwarming than the moment one of those “unwanted” cats chooses to curl up in your lap or lean in for a gentle pet.
Some animals come to you for help. Others come to teach you something you didn’t know you’d forgotten.
It was early spring, one of those damp Georgia mornings when the fog sits low and the world smells like wet earth.
I was unlocking the clinic when I saw her.
A small tortoiseshell cat, maybe six or seven years old, sitting dead center on the porch. Not crouched, not ready to bolt — just sitting, like she was clocking in for work.
Her fur was matted in places, one ear nicked, whiskers uneven. She had the slow, deliberate stare of a creature that had learned not to waste movement.
“Morning,” I said out of habit.
She didn’t answer, but she didn’t leave either.
For the first week, she stayed on the porch. Never came inside.
I put out food. Sometimes she ate it. Sometimes she just sat next to the bowl and watched the road, like she was waiting for someone who’d forgotten her address.
I asked around. No one claimed her.
A tech suggested trapping her so we could check for a chip. I said no. Something about the way she sat there made me feel like she’d come on her own terms — and would stay, or go, the same way.
After about ten days, she started following me to the truck when I left at night. Not close enough to touch, just a shadow keeping pace.
One evening, I sat down on the top step with my thermos of coffee. She came up beside me, close enough that I could feel her warmth.
I didn’t move. Neither did she.
We sat like that until the coffee went cold.
Over the next month, I learned her routine.
Morning: sit on the porch, watching the fog burn off.
Midday: nap under the lilac bush.
Evening: back on the porch, eyes fixed on the gravel road.
It was like she had a shift to work, and I was just another employee sharing the space.
One night in May, a storm rolled in fast — the kind that drops the temperature twenty degrees in ten minutes and sends the trees bowing east.
I was closing up when I realized she wasn’t on the porch. I found her under my truck, trembling.
I knelt down and, for the first time, reached toward her.
She didn’t run. She let me lift her, soggy and tense, and carry her inside.
That night she slept on a towel by the woodstove.
By morning, she was back on the porch.
People asked if she was mine.
I never knew how to answer.
She didn’t live with me. She didn’t let me hold her except during storms. She came and went as she pleased.
But she was there. Every day.
And sometimes, being there is the bigger promise.
One evening in late summer, I was locking up when I saw her in her usual spot — but something was off.
She was breathing hard. Mouth open. Eyes glassy.
I scooped her up without thinking.
In the exam room, I found fluid in her lungs, a weak heartbeat. Heart failure. Probably had been building for months.
I started her on oxygen, meds to ease the pressure. She lay there, not fighting, just watching me the way she always had.
By midnight, she was gone.
I buried her under the lilac bush.
For weeks after, I’d glance at the porch out of habit, expecting to see her.
And each time I didn’t, it stung — but not in the way losing a pet usually does.
This was different.
She hadn’t been mine to keep.
She’d just… stopped by for a while.
That’s the lesson she left me with.
Not every connection is meant to be owned. Not every bond fits into the boxes we make for them.
Some souls show up, share the quiet with you, and move on — and that has to be enough.
We spend so much time holding on that we forget the grace in letting something simply pass through our life, unchanged and unchained — leaving us better for having been there at all.
