Almost one year ago to the day, this little creature appeared at our back door. It was 2:45 in the morning (although as far as I’m concerned, that’s still night) and I was peacefully snoozing when my dreams were interrupted by incessant cat crying.  Now we have several cats but this didn’t sound like any of them, so I crawled out of the bed, stumbled to the door . . . and found this.

She was so excited to find a people and even more excited to find food. Although I made a feeble attempt to find her a home, I knew she already had one.  After all, how many tiny little kittens show up on your doorstep at 2:45 in the morning that aren’t meant to be there?

In the year that has followed I have learned a great deal about this little thing. I named her Callie (‘cause she’s a calico . . . get it?  Ok, not very original, but it stuck—and I can refer to her as Callie Cat) and quickly realized that she would become my most independent kitty, not to mention vicious.

She’s still tiny and rather unassuming . . . until you reach down to pet her. Depending on the day, she’ll either arch her back and purr or roll over on it and try to eat you.  If you pick her up and hold her correctly (straight up with one hand supporting her front legs), she’ll either rub against your hand and purr while you pet her or try to eat your face.  And you never know which day it is until it’s too late.  This cat has gifted me with more scratches and scars than all our other cats combined.  And that’s a lot of cats.

The other evening I picked her up, suggesting that it would be neither polite nor wise to attack my face, when it occurred to me that my cat was the perfect metaphor for grief. (I’m sorry, but when your life revolves around Death, you find correlations in the strangest places.)

Callie showed up on our doorstep at a most inconvenient time, robbing me of much needed rest and demanding that I pay attention to her, much as grief often arrives unannounced and proceeds to turn your world upside down and inside out. She is totally unpredictable, a condition in which grief specializes.  One day you may barely be aware of its presence and the next it’s trying to rip your heart out.  And you never know which day will be which.  Oh, there are the givens . . . birthdays, holidays, special places you shared with a certain someone . . . but for the most part, grief has unpredictability down to a science.

I am hopeful, but not too much so, that as Callie ages she will mellow so I won’t always have to look at my grandchildren and warn them about “that cat”. For most of those who are grieving, the passage of time will soften the pain, but it never truly takes it away.  Just as I will never fully trust Callie to be consistently sociable no matter how many years she stays with us, you can never trust that grieving has ended.  There will always be that day . . . you just won’t always know which day it will be.

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