It has certainly been no secret that I have two cats, one very old and one very young. The old one, Socks, came to us as a half-grown starveling during the summer of 2001, and is the last survivor of the heyday of our pets: three large dogs and two cats. These days she is fragile and mostly blind, but she still gets up every day and hollers until somebody lets her outside for her walkabout and drink of rainwater. She eats and sleeps and uses the litterbox without incident; and as long as she has her drugs, she lets the rest of us sleep at night.

I had always thought I would wait until after her passing to get a kitten, but one day my husband texted me this picture from out front of the grocery store:

What’s a girl to do?

We have adopted a changing-of-the-guard system whereby the two cats don’t occupy the same place at the same time, because if they do then the Old One hisses and yowls and walks into walls. Not to get all metaphysical, but it reminds me of time-travel fiction, where future self cannot be in the same place as past/present self without some catastrophic failure in the time-space fabric thingamajig. Like, you will get back to your own time and place and find out that the Axis powers won World War II.

So, dear Socks is still Number One Cat. She is not going gentle into that good night, either; when she wants to go outside you better hop to, or the neighbors will soon hear her howling. She crawls into our laps the way she did as a kitten, she purrs up a storm, and she steals the new kid’s kibble whenever she can. It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.

Meanwhile, Future Cat is busy capturing hearts and minds and learning about all things feline. He will be more than ready to pick up the mantle when the time comes.

Further edification:

Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas – Poems | poets.org