A wise man once told me true freedom doesn’t happen until your kids leave home and your dog dies. Our beloved dog has been gone several years now. The kids are fluffing their own nests, but the cat — we’re trying to figure out who will inherit him once we aren’t around.

Apparently, he has nine times nine lives. Meow-Meow is closing in on 20 trips around the sun and doesn’t seem to be slowing down much. I don’t know how that equates to human years, but he’s got to be neck and neck with the record Methuselah set way back when.

Seventeen years ago, our daughter had a friend in the military who was leaving for a weekend of training. He had a hefty, feisty cat and wasn’t too thrilled about leaving him alone. On her friend’s behalf, she asked if we would keep the cat. Three days didn’t seem unreasonable.

Day 4 came and went. After several weeks of a very long weekend, we happened to see the owner; he informed us he was being deployed overseas. His smug expression told us he would be sending letters for Meow-Meow to our address. Once he was stateside again, he figured the cat wouldn’t want to be uprooted.

A good guest

Meow proved to be a good mouser, didn’t jump on cabinets, wasn’t needy and seemed content to stay outside most of the time. One evening he came in, covered in blood. Whatever the predator was, its teeth had shredded a back leg. The vet patched him up, and because he was our “weekend” responsibility, we paid the bill.

Meow limped and dragged his leg for a while, but eventually, he was good as new. Sometime later, he stuck his head inside a hole. As a result, he received a nasty bite in the face. Back to the vet we went. And again, he made a full recovery.

After my mother had a stroke, we moved in with her to care for her. We dragged the cat with us. He became her most faithful companion. He fit right in perching on her chair, sleeping at the foot of her bed and stretching his body across her crossword puzzles.

When we built a house within walking distance from hers, Meow refused to leave. He had found his home and his woman. He seemed lost when she passed away. Eventually, he meandered down to our place.

His main mission in life these days is anything I am working on and figuring out how he might spread his body across it. All in all, it’s been a good two decades with the cat who came for a weekend visit.