I was going through a difficult time in my life. My husband of 50 years had died a year earlier after a several year battle with Parkinson's and having quit my job a couple of years before to care for him full-time, I was left alone with only our dear dog, Jack, for company. Jack was elderly, a couple of months short of 17, but he still seemed to be going strong and at his recent visit to the vet had been pronounced in good shape. But on the very one-year anniversary of George's passing, not long before Christmas, Jack developed a bad cough and wouldn't eat anything. I rushed him to the vet where x-rays revealed no lung problem but a large tumor in his abdomen that, at his age, they didn't recommend operating. A couple of days later he died peacefully in my arms.
Still doubly heartbroken two months later, I took the suggestion of a friend that I go with her husband to a showing of a Met opera, "Madame Butterfly", using her ticket as she was unable to go.
I knew that Butterfly was doomed to off herself at the end, but even so I burst into tears. Embarrassed, I explained to my friend, Alfred, that I had become very weepy after first George, and then Jack, had passed away. He said he thought I should get another pet and on the way back to drop me off at my condo, he suggested we stop at a pet food store that often operated as an adoption center for area shelters.
"Where are all your cats?" Alfred asked when we entered. "We had an adoption event and they all went but one," the owner, who knew Alfred, explained. "Everyone wanted kittens and the one left, who was picked up as a stray in Virginia, is not a kitten. But he's a very nice cat." Well of course my heart went out to the poor rejected pussy and when I saw him lying on a shelf behind the cash register, I knew we were meant for each other.
Jeeves is a short-haired black cat with green eyes and a white vest and tummy - a "tuxedo cat" is how he is commonly designated, and so I named him after the famous butler in the hilarious P.G. Wodehouse stories. He had clearly been pre-owned, having been neutered, and was used to a lot of attention including from household dogs. He sometimes complains that it is awfully boring in my now-empty condo and he much enjoys visitors and even my large annual holiday party. But he sleeps curled up beside (and sometimes on top of) me at night, and does a lot of purring and so I am sure that he is as pleased as I that I found him on the shelf.
WASHINGTON, DC
