The Right Door

The chaos of Life is often described in terms of doors: a long hallway with endless portals to walk though. Every decision you make opens one, closes another. And we all know, stepping through the right door can make all the difference.

Nina the cat is exceptionally good at picking the right doors.

She couldn’t have known it was three days til Christmas. Just a tiny runt of a cat with chewed up ears and a belly that poked out, suspiciously, from under her matted tabby coat. She couldn’t have known that I was going to open the door to take out the trash at that exact moment. Or understand that it was the time of year when people are at their most joyous, most pious, most kind. Or even know what kind of people were behind that door.

Could she?

She rushed into the house as soon as the door opened and immediately voiced her concerns to the people sitting inside. She was hungry, tired, infested with fleas and something else that was leaving scabs on the back of her ears. She was over it all, and she let it be known.

The people who lived in the house had been through a lot. We depended on each other. We helped each other. We knew what it felt like to be a little lost in the big, wide world.

Plus, it was nearly Christmas.

The kitten went in the garage with a box and a blanket. A bowl of tuna and some clean, clear water. Her purr was as loud as a car engine, all the roommates said it was true. She curled up, head gently resting on her paws, and slept all day and all night.

That skinny little kitten somehow held six more. That suspicious little bump was exactly what we all thought it was. The kittens were all different colors, a rainbow litter. White and black and tabby and even some with tiny bob-tails. We watched her birth them, mother them, and help them grow.

We found them all homes. And made sure there could be no more. Nina never left my side, she stayed close even as I grew up, moved into a bigger house, met my soulmate, and got married. When we evacuated from hurricanes, Nina would always be put in the car and brought along. She stayed nearby, even when she wasn’t allowed inside the Air BnBs.

She always came back to the door.

After six years of being my constant companion, Nina went missing. I was shocked, of course. She wasn’t a cat to go missing.

I called her name through the neighborhood, wagged her bag of treats, and put up flyers. I joined Facebook groups, tracked down potential cat knappers, and scanned the Humane Society websites. Days passed. Then weeks. I imagined her panting and starving in the streets. Fighting off strays cats and dogs and God knows what else. I hoped someone had picked her up. Someone nice.

Four weeks after Nina disappeared, I got a message from a woman in one of the Lost Pet groups. She worked at the Humane Society near my house. A cat had been brought in that looked like Nina.

I didn’t recognize her in the shelter cage. Her hair was thinned in some places and stuck together. Her face was slimmer, her eyes wide. Was she always so brown? Was she always so wild looking? Was this my Nina?

She rubbed against the cage over and over. Her purr was as loud as a car engine, all the shelter volunteers said it was true.

She’d been brought in that morning by the shelter’s Director of Operations; she had strolled right through her front door.