Tina pulled the blanket around her and waited in the darkness of the bedroom for her rapist.

Sometimes relationships are like popcorn hulls stuck in the back of our throats … all the good is gone, but we can’t quite spit them out. People die or move away or move on and yet we can’t turn loose of what is clearly no longer ours to hold.

That’s what it was like after my brother died. That’s what it was like when my old flame Susan called it quits between us. That’s what it was like after my father died and my sons turned their backs on me.

That’s what it was like when our cat disappeared.

After Mila disappeared, I would go to the back door several times each day and night to call for him. After the third day, I called animal control to see if they had picked him up and then I made and posted fliers all over the neighborhood. For a month or more I would hear scratchings at the back door and fly to it. Then, when my furry buddy wasn’t there, I would mistrust my ears and fly to the front door. Time after time, the only thing awaiting me on the porch was disappointment and his unused water dish.

He had come to us as a soaking wet and terrified kitten, dropped by his mama on the night of a drenching rainstorm. Somehow he had clawed his way up to shelter at the top of my pickup truck tire and that is where Avis had found him in the morning. He was still crying as she carried him in … great set of lungs on the kid — I heard him all the way in the back of our house.

No matter what else might have been on the agenda, life had just shifted focus: we were now cat owners.

Funny thing about that. His mama came back a couple weeks later, gave him a good sniffing, bumped noses and never returned.

I can recall a profound connection with the Almighty on the day he presented me with each of my two sons. It was as if He had said “I am trusting you with My children. Don’t let me down.” As we got Mila dried off and settled in a printer cartridge box with a bit of toweling, The Creator seemed to speak to my heart again, this time saying “You did an okay job with the boys. Let’s see how well you do with a cat. Does your love stop at the boundary of your species or do you recognize that all of my children are your brothers?

I don’t think we often consider that Jehovah may think just as highly of the rest of his creation as he does us. Our egos won’t let us … but then, they have been out of adjustment since the Garden.

Mila lived in progressively larger boxes on my desk and on Avis’ lap, sometimes crawling up my back to sit on my shoulder and watch what I was doing. I would oblige him by bending my neck forward so that he’d have a better perch.

He’s been camping (on a leash). He’s been to Florida, New York City, and Lexington, NC (twice). He travels well. When we moved to Lexington, he rode in the U-Haul truck with me … sometimes on the dashboard, sometimes in his cage, sometimes on the seat behind me divided between the seat and my shoulder and sometimes, for long periods at a time, in the crook of one arm or the other. When he was in the left arm, he would spend time looking out the window before dozing off. His litter box was on the floor and there was dry food in his cage. Once, for about an hour, he sat on the transmission hump, watching my every move and listening as I chatted with him. He’s not much of a conversationalist, but he’s an extremely good listener. Every time we made a pit stop for any reason, he was offered a chance to roam and some water.

But, from February 15 until April 30, we thought he was dead … a perception reinforced by another of his kind having come to our house to die — its face half eaten off and its jaw hanging by sinew. There are raccoons and foxes aplenty in the woods behind our house. Both will eat any animal small enough to kill … and cats qualify.

Last week I got a call from a woman in the neighborhood who ‘adopted’ him as a replacement companion for her daughter. She’s been looking at the posters for quite some time but not calling us, not calling us. Today, was different. She was being evicted and could not take the cat with her … so, her hand being forced, she finally made the effort to reunite us.

She kept our cat until he was no longer ‘our cat’ and then dumped him back in our laps when it was convenient for her.

I let the phone ring the first time. I’ve been sick and was sound asleep. The second time she called I picked up the phone. She called me three more times before I could get my shoes on and out the door. By that time Avis had come home from the store and I told her “They’ve found Mila. Maybe.” We both got into the car as quickly as we could.

This lady lived on a private drive not on either Bing or Google maps so it took a little driving around to find it. There was no street sign, but I tried a dirt road that matched her description in a vague sort of way.

He’d put on weight and, at first, had forgotten us and wouldn’t let us check for the distinctive markings that would identify him. We left with him, unsure if he was even ours to take. Avis and I talked in the car on the way home and decided that even if he wasn’t our cat, our Mila, that we would adopt him if he would accept us.

When we got inside the house we released him from his tiny cage into the larger one of our home. He went scouting … still reluctant to let us touch him. We set out food for him and watched him wolf his way through a whole can of moist food and some dry food besides. Inside of 15 minutes, he was rubbing our legs and lining up for ear scratchings and to be brushed. He went to each of the rooms, even looking for my son and his wife who have since moved on. He liked being near my son, but Jessica made her dislike for him manifest. Other than herself, there isn’t much she does like … certainly not my son. If he wasn’t so blind to her disrespect for him, I’d have dropped her off at a bus station with a one-way ticket back to her fathers home.

Mila jumped on my side of the bed and took up residence there.

We kept him inside for a few days. He seemed to want to lay around and sleep a lot. He had bad gas but, unlike previously, was only too happy to come up and sleep alongside me. He used to sleep on Avis or at our feet, but now he was sleeping on the outside of the bed alongside me.

The scar below his eye identified him as our cat. But his behavior said he wasn’t ours any more.

After he had been four days indoors, I let him out to come sit with us on the porch. He crept off into the night and hasn’t been back since.

We are slightly torn about this. Wishful thinking alone wants him with us. But the reality is that, this time, we are okay with him leaving. In June he’ll be two years old. He’s old enough to decide where he wants to be.

I coughed up the popcorn hull.

Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people’s liberty teeth and keystone under independence … from the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurrences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable … the very atmosphere of firearms anywhere restrains evil interference — they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.

- George Washington, First President of the United States

“By dividing the voter through the political party system, we can get them
to expend their energies in fighting for questions of no importance. It
is thus, by discrete action, we can secure for ourselves that which has
been so well planned and so successfully accomplished.”
- Montagu Norman, Governor of The Bank Of England, addressing the United States Bankers’ Association, New York, 1924.

Imagine a perfectly calming morning.