From House Cat to Alley Cat to. . .

The girl next door didn't care that
the kitten she chose was a "girl cat"
when she chose the name
George, yet the moniker matched:
black-on-white fur forming a jacket,
sunglasses, even a "soul patch"--
a beatnik look. Then George
adopted my family, living the bulk of her life
in our house, returning, periodically,
to check in on the O'Hagens.

Two decades later, working
graveyard shift, I came across
Doppleganger George
deep in the bowels of a retirement home:
that same black-on-white beard, but
this time a bit more reticent, needing
more time before true comfort
and contact was allowed, before resting
in my lap while we both napped
before the day shift arrived.

I don't know which pair
of the nine lives I passed in that
company, but I do know
I lost George twice in my life:
once to old age when, in my youth,
I buried her whole; the second,
myself being older, to a boiler room fan
after taking a very
uncharacteristic fall,
when he was buried in pieces.