A SMALL-SIZED MYSTERY
Leave a door open long enough,
a cat will enter.
Leave food, it will stay.
Soon, on cold nights,
you’ll be saying “Excuse me”
if you want to get out of your chair.
But one thing you’ll never hear from a cat
is “Excuse me.”
Nor Einstein’s famous theorem.
Nor “The quality of mercy is not strained.”
In the dictionary of Cat, mercy is missing.
In this world where much is missing,
a cat fills only a cat-sized hole.
Yet your whole body turns toward it
again and again because it is there.
-Jane Hirshfield
The picture is from some time back,
when I welcomed the many stray-ish cats in the neighborhood,
and fed them what cat food was left over after our cat died.
This one was particularly bold, but not friendly at all.
Gladsome Lights 
On the other hand: that cat-sized hole exceeds the physical size of the Cat by a remarkable degree. When my Dixie Rose died, the space she left was far larger than I could have imagined.
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I agree wholeheartedly.
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Dolly, too.
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Thank you! I have sent this on to my daughter. How I miss our various cats!
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What a lovely telling of how cats often enter our lives.
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I love this so much, Gretchen!
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