Who is the lucky one?

 But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular, 

A name that's peculiar, and more dignified, 

Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular, 

Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?  

- TS Eliot ‘The naming of Cats’

We call her Leah because she is lucky.

In the Old Testament, there were a couple of sisters…Leah and Rachel.  Jacob was a fellow who loved Rachel, so he made a deal with Laban, her father, for her hand.  

The deal? He would work seven years for Laban and in return get Rachel for his wife - now that is love! 

The day finally came and the marriage occurred, unfortunately for Jacob, when he awoke in the morning he found it was Leah by his side, NOT Rachel who he loved.  When confronting Laban, he was told that Leah was the older sister and needed a husband.  

Jacob ended up working another seven years for Rachel, but the point here is that Leah was lucky.  She was lucky to get a husband, lucky to have children, and by her luck, she became part of the matriarchy of the house of Israel.

I mentioned, "We call her Leah because she is lucky!"  This is because we have a Leah in our household too - that would be Leah the cat.  She is lucky because she found us, or rather we found her.  

Her mother was a female of questionable character and had a somewhat loose living arrangement with our next-door neighbors.  The mother was an outdoorser, a mouser with a generalized independent flair both in character and apparently her occasional choice in male cats, meaning in the words of Crosby, Nash, Stills and Young, “If you can’t be with the one you love…” well, you know the rest – okay, if you are under the age of 50 the line ends, “…love the one you’re with.” 

Leah was so tiny when we got her; she fit in the palm of my hand – so tiny that she could hide in or behind my shoes.  A calico, and as is often the case in kittens, her eyes were disproportionately large for her face and body.  This is almost 15 years ago by now.  

Three cats reside in our home, but there is only one who attends much to me.  That would be Leah.  Early in the mornings, she wakes me slipping into bed and climbing on board.  

There she sits until I roll over on to my back, dancing like one of those loggers who stay atop a spinning log in the water.  Once I have gotten to my back, she settles in with a gentle purr.

This, of course in her world, is simply foreplay for breakfast, you know – the tease.  She has a clock in her head that says, “Okay that’s enough.  Now that I have your loving attention – let’s eat!”  

Some people say a person has only so many heartbeats in their lifetime.  Leah seems to have a certain allotment of purring breaths before it’s time to woo me to get her breakfast. 

If I feed her and then head back to bed for a few moments – an infrequent event – she will return to my chest, lie down and purr some more, with a satisfied and relaxed posture that says, “Now isn’t this better on a full stomach?”

There is something primal and exceedingly satisfying about lying tummy-to-tummy, chest-to-chest, heart-to-heart and breath-to-breath in the darkened and early morning hours.  There is something comforting about lying there with a creature in whom there is no malice.  There is something energizing about sharing a moment without words that satisfies both creatures in ways they find individual comfort.

This morning was one of those times.  As we quietly lay tummy to tummy – me reading, she digesting and purring – we found a moment of contentment that these words fail to adequately express, and I was taken by the warmest and gentlest of thoughts that I was the ‘lucky one.’

- ted