This past weekend, I got closer to adopting living, breathing creatures, bringing them into my fairly sedate and austere life.
I had searched Petfinder for weeks and had found two kittens I thought would be fun to share my life and apartment with: Hope (right) and Jesse (below). They were both being fostered by Homeward Trails Animal Rescue, Inc. in Arlington, VA, where I now live. 
Why them? I don't exactly know except that I had had a cat named Sooty
when I was growing up and she was a tabby like Hope and Jesse.
And
there was something about the faces of the two kittens, angular and
small, with big ears and almond-shaped eyes. It seems totally insane to
"pick" an animal based on their color and the shape of their eyes, but
that's what I did. (I knew I would meet them in person before anything
was final, so doing a pre-sort was not only practical but also
efficient.)
I downloaded the application to adopt from Homeward Trails, filled
it out and sent it in. Within a day, I got an e-mail back from Shana,
who said she'd gotten my application and wanted to talk to me about the
kittens. I suggested Friday night. She countered with Saturday, and,
thinking (as usual) only about myself, I said how about 7 p.m. on
Saturday?
When Shana called me at 7 p.m. on Saturday, I noticed the phone sounded funny -- echoing and clipped. I asked her where she was calling me from and she said, "Moscow." She had recently moved there for her work in International Health, but was still running Homeward Trails, long-distance.
Initially, I was disappointed. It had been hard narrowing down my choices to Hope and Jesse. But then I thought about how many kittens there were in the whole wide world. Of course I could consider some other kittens. Shana came up with Jake, an all-black kitten. She asked if I knew that black cats were the hardest cats to find forever homes. "Why?" I asked.
I am superstitious, but not a total dolt. Things like the color of a cat don't bother me and of course I would be glad -- honored -- to consider the sweet little black kitten she suggested.
