Searching for Lucky

I can still remember the day before she left. Lucky sidled up to me
the way cats do when hungry. "No cream for you old girl, even if it is
Christmas!" And so she lapped watery milk from a cracked saucer while I
sipped at my mug of soup.

"And I don't know where you got that name!" I remember thinking,
glancing at the small disc hanging around her neck. "You were half
starved when I took you in, and you haven't fared any better with me
since. Still, I suppose we're both lucky it's a mild winter.

In fact, she had been little more than a bag of bones when I first saw
her, nearly a year before, lying dejected in the gutter. I remember I
tried to walk past and ignore her. After all, I had problems of my own.
But I couldn't. And my reward was that tremendous look of warmth and
gratitude in her eyes when she realised she had found a saviour. It was
that same look that sustained our friendship as the year passed
by.

I never found out where she came from. And I never found out where she
went. The following day after our first and only Christmas together, I
awoke in the cold damp room that had been our home to find her
gone.

That was thirty years ago, though with all the changes that my life has
seen since then, it might just as well be three hundred. But I never
forgot Lucky, because I have always been convinced that it was her
departure that triggered the onset of my good fortune. At first just
the little things (but no less necessary for that!), like finding warm
places to sleep, enough food to eat. Later wealth, prosperity and
happiness. All somehow attributable to the influence of that mysterious
animal.

Earlier this afternoon I was driving my Grandchildren to the Christmas
pantomime, through that part of town where it is best not to walk if
you can avoid it, but it makes a good cut-through in the car. I had to
stop at traffic lights, and was just about to move on again, when I saw
a man of about twenty, dressed in shabby clothes and looking the worse
for drink, bend down to stroke a bedraggled heap of fur and bones on
the pavement. The way Lucky looked up gratefully at this offer of
warmth (as she had to me all those years ago) left no doubt.

That young man had just made the most important encounter of his life.
After all, only a very special cat could have survived all those
years.

Yes. The most important encounter of his life.

He didn't realise, of course.

But she did.