I hadn't wanted any other pets after I left home. On one visit home, I learned that the family dog, Lady, one I had picked out and named, who I fed every day, and always came running when I called, from wherever she was, had sickened and been put to sleep. No one had ever told me she was sick, or that she was dead. So many years later, with two step-children in the house, I was speaking with my mom about traveling to my dad's funeral. She asked me if I wanted one of his cats. I turned to my first wife's daughter and asked if she wanted a cat. She said she did, so I told my mom I would take one. When I arrived at the farmhouse my mom shared with her new husband, she put me in a room where both of my dad's cats had been kept since his death.  My dad, like my mom, had remarried after their divorce, but I suppose his new wife didn't want the cats.  After the wake for my dad, my mom offered to drive me to the airport with the cat I'd picked out. She loaded the cat, in a pet carrier, in her car, along with cat food, and bowls for food and water. On the way, I noticed she had put both cats in the carrier. My brother Pat was with us, and I asked him if he'd take one of the cats, but he said he'd already turned that idea down since he was highly allergic to cats. So I took both cats home, and after my first divorce, I took them with me to a small mortgaged house.  About four years later I married again. One cat had died, but the other was fine. After the male was shot with a pellet gun, I thought I was done with cats. But, although my new wife, it turned out, didn't like animals, a stray female dropped a litter in our yard, and I managed to keep one: a little orange-and-white-striped one, just like my dad's male cat. One year later, a very young black & white female dropped a litter in our yard, but my wife insisted I get rid of them. However, I kept the mother - she looked so much like my dad's female cat, and the two of them were inseparable. After my wife roughly pushed the female off of her lap - the male was on my lap - they never bonded with my new wife. They avoided her. That should have given me pause. She said they gave her the evil eye. Fourteen years later, I found myself divorced again, with two cats to keep me company. They had been my constant companions. However, I found a girlfriend who spent every weekend with me, and we sure had a good time. But the cats always hid when she was there. They didn't like strangers. The woman herself had ghosted me suddenly a year and a half later after we'd met. Not long after that, my male cat disappeared, one day before suppertime, very unlike him, and I never found him, even though I put up posters, and he was chipped. I wandered through several neighborhoods for six months looking for that sweet cat. In my loneliness, I'd never felt such a close bond with any animal before. Then, early this year, the female cat died, about six years after I'd acquired a companion for the sad thing. I sure missed her. Not long after, about six months later, that cat died as well. I'd hadn't bonded very closely with that one, but the house is so empty now.