Cat's Adopt You!

I don’t know if anyone has ever told you this, but you don’t adopt cats, they adopt you! That was certainly the case with Charlie.

My daughter was twelve when we moved out of an apartment complex that had sued us for owning a dog. They claimed that our six pound poodle had totally saturated the carpets with urine. It just wasn’t true. After a thirty minute court battle the apartment owner dropped the case stating, “No contest”! It was a small victory, but it had made me determined not to ever own a pet again while living in apartments.

So when we went on the walk that day, I was not looking to take in a stray. We had moved from the apartments that had sued us to a new area of town that had condos. We were walking along our new exercise route around the Lichterman Nature Center in Memphis, when we heard a mysterious sound. My daughter would want me to tell you that she was wearing a purple cat shirt that my mother had given her which made that day even more special almost as if a premonition had prompted her to wear it. We had just turned the corner when we heard the sound again.

I stopped her and said, “Listen, it sounds like crying!” She agreed and we both started looking around into the ditch and the nearby woods. My daughter was the first to find him. He came walking out of the woods towards her crying. She quickly scooped him up and brought him over to me. “Look what I found, it’s a kitten!, “ “Isn’t he the cutest kitten ever!” “Can we keep him mom?” she asked.

To me it was without a doubt the ugliest, scraggliest, tiny kitten I had ever seen. It was clear that we couldn’t just leave the defenseless little kitten there between the busy street and the woods. It would either starve to death or get run over. I told her we would only keep it long enough to find it a home.

I started trying to reason with her against keeping it, when a man and his little boy rode up on a bicycle. We asked them if it was their kitten. They told us no. They had seen it earlier and were coming back to check on it. They didn’t want him, they just wanted to make sure it didn’t get run over. I told them about a neighbor who adopted cats. We were planning on taking it to her to see if she would take it in; that in fact we were just going to keep it long enough to find it a good home. They agreed that we should take it and left.

When we got home, my neighbor refused it. She felt we were meant to keep it. I told her no! I went into the whole story about how we had been sued at our previous apartment over a dog. She stated that she had too many cats as it was to take in another one. So I immediately went with my next idea, which was to see if the new pet store at the Mall would take him in.

I took my daughter ice skating at the mall the next day and we stopped at the pet store. We explained to them that we had found a stray kitten that needed a home, and asked them if they would take it. The man at the store told me he would be happy too, if it didn’t have fleas. I took one look at their collection of beautiful, fat, fluffy kittens and realized no one would want the scrawny thing that we had. So I told him that I would fatten him and bring him in Friday morning.

Well Friday came and we had indeed fattened him up. My daughter had a friend coming over to spend the night, and when the girls brought the kitten in to feed it I discovered it was covered from head to toes in fleas. In fact, I had never seen such a bad case of fleas before or since than what this scrawny kitten had. I told my daughter and her friend that I believed the Good Lord wanted us to keep that kitten. I told her to give it a bath and a name. After buying some flea shampoo, my daughter and her friend happily ran off to give him a bath. On the way upstairs she shouted down, “Oh by the way, we are going to name him Charlie!” At the time I thought she was naming it after the most recent foster child. You see we had a habit of taking in strays, but not animals. We took in foster children who were in temporary need of homes. Later I learned that she named it after a cat in her Granny’s neighborhood named Bad Luck Charlie. She was naming him Good Luck Charlie!

I had no idea at the time how important Charlie would become to our foster care ministry. He was definitely good luck! You see, Charlie it seemed had been gifted with the ability to calm hurting children. I first noticed it when he got a little older and we took a couple of girls for respite care. He would circle around any hurting child rolling on his stomach begging for attention until all was well.

Charlie would put on quite a show. He was always trying to help my child with her homework or get into some kind of mischief. Once Charlie even calmed down a friend of mine who came over to my house to talk about her husband. She was contemplating divorce. Charlie rolled over onto his stomach until she was petting him. She couldn’t believe my cat. She said he acted more like a dog than a cat. You see Charlie was actually a Maine Coon cat. What was once an ugly kitten had grown into a beautiful, stripped, fluffy cat who weighed about twenty pounds!

Then the day came that tested his healing gift. It was the day when we got in a pair of siblings whose mom had not picked them up from the babysitters. She was nowhere to be found. The kids were considered abandoned, and we were asked to take them in temporarily until other arrangements were made. We later learned that the mom was believed to have been killed by a serial killer as she was found dead.

Well, the little boy was inconsolable! He was really attached to his mother, and I had already tried to comfort him to no avail. I gave up to focus on the younger sibling who was oblivious, and had started getting into everything. I popped a kids show into the VCR and watched as Charlie starting his circling antics. The little boy started pushing him away, but Charlie just kept at it. I started to call him off and tell him it was just useless; that you couldn’t win everyone when the boy started petting him, and watching the movie. I was relieved! I was also convinced that the cat truly had a gift.

After that we got several more foster children, and then the two girls who came to stay with us the longest. They stayed over an entire year, and grew quite close to Charlie. It was then that the oldest one gave Charlie the nick name “Char Char!” Honestly I didn’t like it at the time. However, when they left to get adopted I couldn’t do anything but call Charlie, “Char Char!” I truly missed the girls, but they were going to live with a couple at church and we would still continue to see them. In fact many times the girls would call, and if I wasn’t home they would leave messages on the answering machine for Char Char!

It was then that Char Char comforted me quite a bit. I was always sad when our foster children left, but these two had been with us quite a while and it was difficult. As time would have it my daughter grew up and Char Char got older. Then my daughter joined the army, got married and had a child of her own. Charlie lived with me through several moves. The two girls who had stayed with us the longest would come and visit, eventually bringing their friends and then families. Most of the time, I was basically alone with the exception of Char Char. He was a great companion. I loved him dearly, and I realized the scrawny, little cat had adopted me and it was definitely not the other way around. I was grateful for his company.

Later, when my daughter got sent to Iraq during Operation Enduring Freedom, Char Char got cancer. I took him to the vet and held him as he was put down. His big gold eyes looking at me in love, trusting me to put him out of his misery. I hated that my daughter was not there to say goodbye. I had never cried so much about a pet before. He was so much more than a scrawny cat. He was more than good luck! He was family! He was a gift from God to help the hurting children we took in! In the end, I was glad for that fateful day that brought us all together when Charlie adopted us!