One dreary afternoon, I hear my cat door flap open and glimpse a small orange cat slipping towards the kitchen. My own cat, Dewey Moon, is sawing logs on the sofa beside me. Normally, if any stranger breaches his castle, Dewey puffs to twice his size and leaps to investigate.

I follow the little orange guy, and he notes me matter-of-factly. In fact, I have never met a less intimidated cat burglar. I scoop him up — a featherweight. One eye is blue and one is green. He has a white face, white chest, white paws. Otherwise, he is the pale-orange color of a Dreamsicle. There is immense trust in that little poker face. 

His tag informs me that he lives a few houses away; he has people, but what a cold, rainy day it is, and so I feed him. In my house, if you appear to be waylaid by trouble or weather, I feed you. He eats a bowlful and follows me back to the sofa. Dewey awakes, stretches, rubs noses with the little guy, offers to make him a cup of tea. Little guy says he’s already had refreshments, then makes himself right at home, licking a few remaining raindrops from his fur and nuzzling into a throw-blanket. After his nap, he meows to be let out, and I watch him trot confidently in the direction of his home.

The next day, I walk to his house and find him taking a sun bath on his porch. We wave fondly at one another.

“Do you know that cat?” I ask a neighbor.

“Everybody knows George,” the man says. “He’s feeling displaced these days.”

“Why?”

“There’s a new baby at his house.”

•

The baby’s name is Owen. I soon meet the entire family because George loses his collar over the weekend, and I report it to his mom, Madison. “I’ve already ordered a new one,” she says. “Thanks for looking out for him. Hope he’s not being a nuisance.”

I confess that I fed him, that he is pals with Dewey and that the three of us sometimes nap together. I suggest that, if George became my cat, it would be OK.

“Making friends is George’s thing,” Madison tells me. “He gets free range because we want him to be his authentic self. You’ll love his new collar. It fits a bon vivant like George.”

It is a red bowtie.

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Everybody who meets George loves him. He shows up whenever I have visitors and glad-hands around the room, like he’s running for office.

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One Halloween, George is hanging out with Dewey and me when Madison and husband Carr bring their kids by to trick-or-treat. After she sees them together, daughter Ellis starts planning George’s and Dewey’s wedding.

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George is 18, possibly older. He also has serious kidney issues. But does he ever whine about his ailments? No, siree. Life is for the living, George insists, batting around a cat toy, then jumping on Dewey’s head.

•

When Madison lets me know that George has died (“gone over the rainbow” is how she puts it), after I have wept a good long while, I feel the need to write about him. The writer Sandra Cisneros once told me that the way to write about grief is to write about the presence of a lost loved one, not their absence. And my dear friend George keeps on being present. Through him, I’ve become friends with his funny and spirited family, a gift that endures.

He was not my cat, and maybe he was not a cat at all. You begin to think that way when your doorway has been brightened by a radiant someone who seems to transcend the limitations of their species while making the world a better place.  OH

Marianne Gingher is a Greensboro writer, artist and puppeteer who lives with her beloved cat, Dewey Moon.