Sometimes through loss you find something you never expect to touch your heart. For me, that is Toby.

My wife and I moved to Maine from Boston, to decompress from city life. In that move we brought the five cats we adopted there. One of them was Genny (full name, Genaea Yaman, meaning “strong” and “intelligent”  in Turkish.)

Genny as a kitten	Genny @ 6

She was a beautiful pure-bred Turkish Angora we rescued from a shelter in Connecticut. Her hoarder-obsessed breeder was finally shut down and her cats and kittens were sent to rescue organizations, where we happened to find her. She was a scraggly kitten who grew up to be a lithe, talkative cat.  I could carry on conversations with her all day in “cat speak”. She would ride around on my shoulders without a care in the world, as I walked around the house. One day, we found she had died overnight in our cellar. She was only twelve and she was greatly missed.

Genny left a hole in our cat family, one we wanted to fill again. Off to the local Skowhegan Animal Shelter to see if they had kittens available for adoption.

 The shelter has a room dedicated to kittens available for adoption and on that day there were many running around.  We had decided to adopt an all black kitten, in honor of Genny and because, statistically, they are the least likely to be adopted. Silly human superstitions being what they are…

There was a litter of new kittens where each was black as coal and telling them apart was nearly impossible.  I stood by a small carpet-covered cat tree and watched as my wife struggled to see differences among the group and find one that stood out.

The search for the right one went on for a while and I gradually felt a small paw curl around my elbow. I looked down into the sweetest kitten face in the room.  We locked eyes.

 I tried to move away to help my wife with her selection and the paw gripped tighter. I knew we came for just one kitten. I was beginning to see a dilemma…

 I disentangled myself from the kitten’s grasp and helped select a black kitten, which we could barely distinguish from the others. When I went back to stand near the cat tree, the kitten’s grip was back. I knew what I had to do.

We left the shelter that day with two adorable kittens. Grace (my wife named her after the singer, Grace Potter,) has grown to a beautiful, if somewhat crazy cat. Toby, (Tobias when he’s bad – which he rarely is) has grown into a gentle, adorable cat, who picks up where Genny left off, having long cat conversations with me.

Life comes full circle sometimes, and Genny, in a small way, is still here through these two cats. Each their own individual, Toby has claimed me as his own, much the way he did nine years ago in that cat shelter. Every day with him is with my feline best friend. May we continue together for a while longer.