Strays

I love being up at 4 AM when the world is still asleep and the coffee pot is set up and I can hear it churning out nasally noises, and then when it's done I hear the ticking sound of the hotplate switching off and on while I listen to the radio, to Jazz with Bob Parlocha. Hello Bob, are you really there or was this show taped weeks ago, just wondering. Is it the middle of the night where you are, too? Are you in sunny California or wintry New England or somewhere in between? Hey Bob, I rescued a cat this week, and I almost rescued a little brown boy on skates yesterday. He was crying. He was with a large white lady who looked like she was hired to help him have fun, and he was crying very hard. She was not exactly nurturing, just persevering, pushing him while he held on to a two-tiered tower of red and brown plastic milk crates. I wondered if he too needed to be rescued. Then I pictured him 14 years from now, tall, maybe handsome, and wondering why a lady in Woonsocket, herself a stray, had added him to her collection of strays. And I thought, Bob, maybe rescuing the cat was enough.