Lucky

So, last night when I finally crawled off to bed at around 4:00 or so (I don't know why I can't get to bed at a normal hour anymore, but that's topic for another day), I was thinking about how lucky Brian and I have been since we moved here. I've finished not one but three degrees, he's started making art again and found a studio space to do it in, we've made a whole new set of wonderful friends and reconnected with old ones whe had lost touch with, and -- the most astounding luck of all, we have lived for nearly a year now practically rent free, exchanging odd jobs and cat-sitting for our apartment.

This housing situation has made it possible for me to devote all my attention to school, for Brian to accept fewer web design jobs and work more on his sculptures, and has introduced us to yet another round of really great people, including our landlady Jana and our upstairs neighbor, Ira.

So, the class I'll be teaching at New College is just the latest in what seems like an endless stream of good news. And going to bed last night, I couldn't help but wonder, in that it's-4AM-and-God-I'm-tired way, if maybe we didn't deserve it. After all, I've made so many mistakes in my life, messed up so many good oppurtunities. Could the universe really still have such a store of good luck set aside for me? Shouldn't a meteor be hurtling towards us or something?

So when Brian woke me up this morning to tell me the cat was missing, I couldn't help but see it as fate's fickle finger pressing down. Nine-One-One -- the cat that is -- tends to be a homebody. He'll usually hang out in whatever room we're in when we're home, and when he does go outside (there's a cat door built in to the back door, and he can come and go at will) he usually just sticks to the porch or wanders into one of the adjoining yards. It's very, very rare that he won't come when he's called, particularly when we're holding treats.

But this morning he didn't come, and he didn't come. Brian and I scoured the house and yard, checking every place we thought a cat might get trapped, or (god forbid) hide if he were sick or wounded. We pressed our ear to the floor, listening for faint meows from the crawlspace below the house and poked through the construction site next door. I even checked the refirgerator, on the off chance that he'd jumped in when I got myself a glass of water before bed.

Finally, we just decided we'd have to wait, and that if he wasn't home by 3 or 4 this afternoon, we'd start printing up lost cat signs and knocking on neighbor's doors. We were hoping he'd just wandered in to someone else's kitchen, or maybe fallen asleep in a patch of sunlight too far from our yard to hear us calling. I tried to work on my thesis, but couldn't concentrate. Finally, I just decided to take a book and lie down for a while, hoping my nerves would settle.

I hadn't even made it through one chapter when the cat walked in, looking sheepish but otherwise fine. We picked him up and hugged him (and for once he didn't complain about being held) and fed him an obscene amount of treats. And he's here now, purring and snoring and generally being his awful cute self.


I guess we're just lucky.