An Open Letter to Grace the Cat...

Dear My Cat,

I met you on the top floor of an East Village walk-up, during a particularly ill-conceived group research session lacking internet, functional computers and a well-defined mission.

What little work I may have gotten done, had the internet been working, you prevented by sashaying over to me, with your low-hanging stomach and train-like purring, head-butting me until I gave you attention.

This was the first time I considered that you and I might be destined for each other, your neediness generally matching a level of aggressive placation that I had become accustomed to providing all of my pets.

You came home with me a few weeks later, and poured out of a rickety cat carrier covered in dandruff, or, it seemed to me at the time, dust from neglect.

The first weeks were hard. You didn't speak for days. You slept in the closet. You didn't trust me, or Keith -- who wanted to send you back home to He Who Shall Not Be Named, whose phone number I conveniently misplaced for several crucial weeks.

You purred and purred at night in our faces, and scratched too early and often for food. And generally you seemed to have a miserable and discontented disposition.

But you grew to love us, and trust us. And after a while it became clear that you weren't miserable and discontented permanently, but had just become used to unhappiness over time.

At night I would come home and find you waiting, shyly in the closet, for someone who would feed you and pet you.

And while I watched bad scifi (Syfy) or jittered at my computer, you were always there.

And you trusted us when we left that eventually we would always return.

Until one day, I left and didn't come back. And then Keith put you in your case and drove you far away.

This was not a decision I made lightly, but I made it, nonetheless. And I am sorry.

That doesn't matter to you, however, because you are a cat and all you know now is that you live in a cozy Nebraskan basement and get petted by similar, but not quite the same, people.

And I know I broke my promise to take care of you, but I will come back for you. You will have a home again, and someone to love you, someday, oh darling kitty.