Emma Donna M. Garfield - Lyndon, VT
C
rash! I open my eyes and look at my watch. It is 2:25 a.m. I already know the cause of the crash but turn over anyway. There on the small chest of drawers beside the bed is Emma. She sits there and looks at me as if to say, “I didn’t hear anything.” Right. The little imp has just pushed my stack of 10 paperbacks onto the floor and is now sitting there looking innocent and nonplussed. Emma is our 13-year-old cat and she delights us every day. Pushing paperbacks off the stand is just one of the things she does to get attention. Emma came into our lives in October 2009. We had lost a cat in July of the same year and we were devastated. Amidst all the tears, my husband said
22 4 Legs & a Tail
we wouldn’t be getting any more cats. Even though we always had a cat or cats, it was too hard on us when the last one died. We walked around for months thinking we saw him coming into the room or his tail disappearing around a corner. It just went on and on. I knew my husband meant well, but there was just no way I could live without a cat. One of my co-workers was watching me go through my grief and said she had a cat at home who was about four months old that she would love to bring to me. She had barn cats but some of them were more domesticated than others, and there was one special one she felt belonged to me. I kept telling her no. Then one day in October she was bringing kittens in for some of her friends and at the last minute put Emma in the car, too. I knew I was in trouble. I picked up Emma and she snuggled into my neck and, well, you all know I immediately fell in love with her. She was a dark gray tiger with white under her nose and around her mouth. She had a beautiful gold color on her belly (befitting a princess of course). I called my husband to tell him I would be bringing home a cat. He wasn’t very happy as he thought we had agreed not to have any more. Well, actually we didn’t agree, because at the right time I knew we would have one. I finally said to him, “If God is sending us a cat, who are we to send the cat away?” (I think it was in my wedding vows that I would always have a cat but my husband must have forgotten about that line in the ceremony!) So at the end of the day, Emma and I headed home and she and my husband, Reed, met for the first time. The next morning I left for work and Emma stayed home with Reed who was retired. Over the course of the next several weeks, I received emails with pictures of Emma sleeping in Reed’s desk drawer on a fluffy towel he had placed there for her, sprawled across his keyboard as he was trying to work, or laying on the Morse Code keyer as he was trying to Summer 2022
