Two Old Survivors

“I’m ready for a new cat,” my 97-year-old Mom tells me.

“Dixie,” my mother’s last cat, had died two months earlier. Back when the beloved cat was still alive, mom had said it was her last. But she’d said the same thing about Dixie’s predecessor, “Curry” and before that, “Lucky.”

To be clear, Dixie was only “beloved” by my mother. That cat used to scare the bejesus out of me with its screeching. I swear…