My family was an anti-cat establishment. The fact that my grandfather was allergic was just my mom’s excuse for never letting a cat anywhere near our property. When I was a kid she always used to tell me to turn to God if I thought adults were being stupid, so I did that: at the age of eight I said a prayer that God would give me a cat, not quite sure how to word that or thinking about the logistics of how, exactly, God was gonna give me a cat.
The same night, unbeknownst to me til the next day, my mother was praying that God would send her a third baby. She wanted another child, even though her last pregnancy had been very hard on her body and our father wasn’t sure it was a good idea financially either. So she prayed.
Whether or not you believe in God—whether you believe this was some sort of divine manifestation or something else entirely—God answered in the cheekiest way possible, and the very next morning there was a baby cat just… in the bush by our front porch. 2 weeks old. Littlest bean.
My mom flipped out because, like I said, anti-cat establishment. “IT HAS RABIES” “IT KEEPS MEOWING THAT MEANS IT HAS RABIES” and all kinds of other hysterical stuff echoed throughout the house. I kind of think she may have had some sort of phobia because I mean…. It was a kitten bean. But in any case, we called animal control. While animal control was on the way, my day put gloves on and went outside to meet the kitten. The kitten tiptoed out of the bush to meet my dad and that was actually how we discovered that it was a kitten and not a full grown cat, because man that girl had a strong meowing game. The kitten very much liked my dad. And once she was convinced my dad was a Safe Human, she immediately started trying to get inside our house and was confused that we kept shutting her out. She was like, but guys that’s our house, right?
Animal control arrived and was a little perplexed by where she could have come from. They never did identify any cat litter in the area even close to her patterning or with kittens of the right age, so to this day it’s a mystery where she spawned in from. They confirmed for my mom that the kitten had no signs of rabies at all. Then they said she was too young for them to care for her long, so if no one adopted her by 4 PM (that was in two hours) they would have to put her down.
My mom flipped into mama bear mode immediately. Sure, she was anti-cat, but immediately her reaction was “NO YOU CAN’T KILL THE BABY! LOOK AT IT! IT’S A BABY!” And she looked up at my mom with the most adoring little eyes, because guys I can’t even begin to describe the level of charisma she had as a kitten. She was full of it. Honestly, I think someone probably would have adopted her before 4 PM, but my mom was not gonna take that chance. So we said we would foster her for five weeks while looking for someone to adopt her.
I begged, “can we keep her can we keep her can we keep her??” My mom said, “absolutely not.”
Reader, we kept her. My mom bottle feeding her was all it took. She was in love with the little kitty even though she professed not to be. She said maybe she should have been more specific when she asked God for a baby, and I was like, “is now a good time to mention I actually prayed for a cat?”
After those five weeks my dad had figured out that we were keeping her. My mom was still in denial, I think, all the way until we moved houses and brought the cat with us. By that point she was our cat.
It was at the five week point that my parents named her. “Gracie” means “gift from God.” She’s named for the song “Amazing Grace,” because in my father’s words, “she was lost, but now she is found.”
She’ll always have been the most perfect gift that God could have given our family.
Tragically she developed bladder cancer and then hid it from us for long enough that there wasn’t anything they could do to treat her. The day they took her to the vet and found this out was the same day they found out the only option was to euthanize her. I had to say goodbye over FaceTime, but she recognized my voice and got angry every time someone took the phone away from her, so at least she knew how much I loved her.
Rest in peace, Gracie—the answer to two prayers, the most beautiful cat in the world, my darling angel who now darts mischievously around the legs of the other angels. Rational soul or not, I know God can hear you meowing incessantly. 💞 God bless forever and ever.
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