This holiday season I have something warm and fuzzy to be thankful for—Goldilocks, the kitten who came for the holidays.
As I was preparing for Thanksgiving, I opened my front door to the sound of really loud really pitiful crying. A tiny grey kitten with a large golden spot on nape of her neck was howling in the middle of the street just a few feet from my door. Living as I do in a town where there are many homeless cats and kittens, I do not usually respond to such cries. My dogs maintain “cat patrol” in my back garden and quickly chase strays away.
However, the cries of this little kitten were so insistent that I picked her up. She was smaller than my hand. My neighbor who was sweeping his porch offered to take her in. A few hours later he returned her. She was still mewing loudly, and, he said, she had not stopped crying all day long. I found a syringe and fed her some milk. Soon the crying stopped and she began purring in my lap.
When I told another friend about finding a small grey kitten in the street, she replied that this must be the kitten that had almost gotten run over on the main road the night before. We determined that the kitten lived with her mother in the storage room of a minimarket around the corner that had just closed for the winter season. Despite the fact that the kitten seemed too little to be removed from her mother, there didn’t seem to be any point in taking her back to her home, as there was no way to stop a kitten from running out into the street where it would surely be killed. I decided to keep her.
I named her Goldilocks after the unusual golden spot on the back of her head. As she has grown, a few smaller golden spots have emerged on her silver coat. She graduated to solid food the second day and learned to use the kitty litter on the third. She climbed the stairs not long after. She is always underfoot or nestled in one of the crevices of my body. She loves to sit on my shoulder rubbing up against my hair. As I write, she has crawled under the warm computer on my lap.
She will not always be tiny. Next year she will be a beautiful grey calico cat with golden markings. But right now and for a little while longer, she is the kitten who came for the holidays. I cannot imagine this holiday season without her.
Happy holidays!
Carol P. Christ was born on the eve of Winter Solstice and her mother named her after the carols being sung while she was emerging from the womb. Carol is a founding mother in the study of women and religion, feminist theology, women’s spirituality, and the Goddess movement. She has been active in peace and justice movements all of her adult life. She teaches online courses in the Women’s Spirituality program at CIIS. Her books include She Who Changes and Rebirth of the Goddess and the widely used anthologies Womanspirit Rising and Weaving the Visions. One of her great joys is leading Goddess Pilgrimages to Crete through Ariadne Institute.
feminismandreligion.com 
Many blessings to you and Miss Goldilocks, whose name is also very appropriate for a Solstice cat!
I recently lost my dear old boy, Oberon, to sudden renal failure: but in the midst of my mourning, he seems to have gotten tired (in true male fashion) of my tears and sent a stand-in. Through the agency of a friend who appraises houses, who called just a week later about a cat with an urgent need for a home, Mlle. Colette–a sleek black longhair who prefers to be spoken to in French–came to take up her place on my lap.
Goddess works in funny ways.
Enjoy your purring little gift, and give her a rub behind the ear from me. :-)
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Love it! As it happens, my neighbor has just taken in a tuxedo kitten that’s been wandering around our courtyard for several weeks. It’s been finding food set out for it in front of half the apartments, and one of my near neighbors put out a towel for it sleep on. When it started getting colder at night, so my nearest neighbor and I put out more old towels for it to sleep on, then the neighbor bought a cat bed. Two days ago, the neighbor and her husband took the kitten to the vet. We think it’s a female kitten, and since my neighbor’s cat is named Lucy, I decided the new kitten is Ethel. Yesterday I went to the pet store to buy catnip toys for Schroedinger and Heisenberg, my cats. I also bought catnip toys for Lucy and Ethel. I think there should be kittens in the Nativity scenes that are so popular.
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What a sweet gift from the Goddess.
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