There was this guy. This guy lived in a house with his wife and with their dog and with their two cats. The cats are named Linus and Lucy.

The man got up one day and said to himself, “Looks like a boring day. I have an appointment with a nutritionist and my wife has to take the cats to the vet for their annual shots. Just another day. Big whoopee. Nothing special.”

While leaving the nutritionist office, the man received a phone call from his wife, “When the veterinarian assistant was following their office Covid protocol, which means all animals are brought into the office by the assistants and the owners stay outside, somehow Linus’ cage door opened up and he took off!”

The man’s heart sank and being an educated and a spiritual man he said, “Shit! Fuck! How did that happen? Who is to blame? Blah, blah, blah…”

The man, his wife and his family and friends spent the rest of the 100 degree day out in the fields, behind the veterinarian office, walking the roads saying, “Here kitty kitty, here kitty kitty. Linus? Here kitty.”  They put up signs, posted on social media sites,  talked to the people living in that area – which had a very busy highway on one side and agriculture fields on the other side.  The kitty did not come to the people saying “Here kitty kitty.” (They all used a high pitch voice when they said kitty kitty.)

The man, the wife, their family, their friends were all very sad. Being that the vet office was five miles from where Linus lived, everyone was concerned.  The man even thought, “Is is right to ask for God’s help in finding a cat? With all the tragedies in the world, is that an insult to society, religion, and God?  The man wondered too why did he care so much for kitty kitty?

After nine hours of searching for Linus, with the sun setting and darkness coming on, nobody wanted to face the facts. Still they all kept looking, even using binoculars to search the distant fields. Nobody was hopeful, but they were driven to keep looking.

And then someone said, “Did I hear a cat?” And someone else said, “I think I did too,” Nobody knew where the sound came from though. Looking across a ten acre field, a family member said, “Is that a cat or a piece of wood way over there?”  Looking through binoculars, the man said, “It is a cat that looks like Linus.”

Slowly, they walked out toward the cat until only the wife went out the remaining distance as not to startle the cat. It was Linus, and although purring at first, he did not want to be held and a cat that does not want to be held can be very difficult to hold. Yet, the wife would not let go of Linus.

The man was very thankful to his family member – ok, it was his oldest daughter who declared she should now get special treatment in her parents’ will…she is a loving and funny woman which when the man thinks about it,  all his family and friends are loving, and most of them are funny. Not as funny as the man, but funny enough.

The man returned home with Linus and started thinking, “This day ended up exactly how I would have expected when I got up this morning-one dog, two cats in the house, yet I am so grateful that I can pet them all, share our lives with them. But that was not how I looked at things when I started the day. A normal day is a gift when you are surrounded by people that you love and/or pets that you love and/or flowers that you love, or just Love. Nothing else needs to happen in order to have a good, no, a great day.”

The man got out of bed early the next morning to watch the sunrise. Thinking of his new day he thought, “I think this is going to be a great day, even if I do nothing but pet the cat.”