Karin Nelson

Weird picture isn’t it? Well, there is a story that comes with this picture. A true story. Even though I still can’t quite believe it myself.

This past Saturday, we had to euthanize our beloved orange tabby Chester. He was an amazing cat, and it broke our hearts to have to do it. He was very, very ill and would have suffered greatly had we waited any longer. My friend Kelly is also our vet, and she thankfully agreed to come to our house on Saturday morning to put Chester to sleep. We had gathered around him on the living room floor to be with him in his final minutes, and when his weak little body went limp, I broke down in tears. He was just laying there, on my husbands lap, and I couldn’t bear to see him like that. I reached beside me to grab Chester’s little pet bed, so that he could be placed inside it. At this point, Kelly looks up and says “What’s that?”, pointing in the corner where the cat bed used to be. I turned around and I found a small, minuscule plastic toy. A tiny kitten. Orange. Like our Chester.

I don’t remember ever seeing this toy before in my entire life. Even my 13 year old son doesn’t remember it. And he knows all of his toys. For all we know, this wasn’t ours. But yet the kitten was there, in our living room. A plastic kitten. Not a ball. Not a car. Not even a little dog. A cat. Not a black or grey cat. An orange cat. Just like Chester.

I got shivers up and down my spine. Maybe I was trying to find something to comfort myself, but one thought came up immediately after picking up the toy. It was a sign. A little signal. A message from somewhere. Something that told me that Chester was still around, still with us, and he was ok. I may be silly, more than that, dumb or crazy or worse. But that little toy, and the fact that it was found in this precise moment, in this precise spot, helped me gather myself and calm down.

Yes. I know it’s a coincidence. But what are the chances?