Meet Euphemia, called Effie

Effie

I thought I would never get over Coolidge, but God’s mercy toward me is far richer than what I could muster toward myself.

Coolidge passed from scant life to death yesterday at 3:45 a.m. As the day, and I with it, wore dully on, I realized that I could not imagine spending the night in our house without a cat. I never had. It simply could not happen.

I went to the websites of a pet rescue organization and the Humane Society. Each had one stand-out cat. The pet rescue group required an interview and home visits, which my husband and I agreed were out of line. A further complication was the fostering hostess’s apparent reluctance to release the cat in her keeping to a series of aspiring adopters.

The potential new light of my life was hosted for the Humane Society at Petco. We went to check her out after dinner. Two wonderful ladies removed the small, sweet 14-month-old dilute tortoise shell kitty from her enclosure to my arms. She was nervous and shy, as Coolidge had been. It was a lock. And it was no hassle. We were treated as competent cat people, instead of as war criminals with animal-torture records as long as Cruella Devill’s nails.

She’s ours. I renamed her Euphemia, meaning “choice words” and “good repute,” for a character in Walter Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian. She purred her first night with us, and restored a sense of sustainability to life.