I live with a portly black and gray tabby cat I got from the shelter when he was eight years old. Louie is ten now, and only slightly less portly; he and I are locked in an endless struggle over food. He would like more, and I would love to give him more, but I know I shouldn’t. He owns my armchair. When I take a nap, he wails downstairs for a while and then comes up and nestles his head in my armpit so I can’t read. I call him Uncle Louie because living with him is like having an uncle around, slightly disapproving, amiably distracted, with opinions. I will take care of him for the rest of his life, with any luck, but I’m not getting any new cats any time soon.

The cat I had before him was Sugar. Sugar was a back yard cat. She came into our yard when my husband was still alive, and she stropped herself against us, purred, and generally informed us that now we owned a cat. My husband wouldn’t let me take her in, but one day he called me at work and said, “She’s four years old, she’s neutered, and she has a chip, but the owner’s phone is disconnected,” because he had taken her to the vet. She moved in with us, and lived for a very long time, despite being considerably broken, and despite losing all her teeth. Her ashes are scattered around my husband’s gravestone to keep him company.

I was never going to get another cat after her, but somehow Louie happened. Cats do tend to happen.

All of this is to say that yesterday, a tiny little white-and-brown creature appeared in my adult kid’s back yard. My kid (who already has two elderly cats) gave her some food, and the new cat informed my kid that they were adopting her. Today, with me and the grandchild aiding and abetting, we took the little creature to the vet for an exam, vaccinations, and flea meds. She’s in my third floor back room now while we wait to get her blood work back, because my adult kid’s house is too small to keep her isolated, but unless she has some fatal disease, I’m pretty sure my kid has a new cat, who will get a name when we are positive.

I was happy to step up, and am paying for the spay operation if she is going to live, because as I said to my kid, this is an emergency. When you have an emergency, you don’t worry about things. You just stand up and get moving, and figure everything else out later. It’s like a fire drill, I said to my kid; when I was teaching, and the alarm went off, I stood up, grabbed the attendance clipboard, and made my kids start walking. They used to complain because I took it so seriously, and all I ever said was, “I have seen how fast a fire can move.”