At that point, I figured this had to be a lost cat, so I scooped him up and started walking around the block. I was knocking on doors asking people if this was perhaps their cat. Eventually, I got to a small apartment building. The woman looked at the cat I was holding and said, "That's nobody's cat. It showed up a couple of days ago and a neighbor started feeding it."

Well, after carrying this little boy around for half an hour, there was no way I was going to just leave him there. I went back to my job, got a bag big enough to hold him. "You are one lucky cat," I told him. Then I took him home on the train. That's how I got Lucky.

When I took Lucky to the vet that weekend, he said, "Well, let's see how old this guy is." The vet checked Lucky's teeth three times, then looked at me with an incredulous look on his face. "This is a kitten," he said. Yep, the cute little cat, despite his length and height, was only six months old. (In retrospect, we both probably should have realized it. When I look at his photos from then, he definitely still had a baby face.)

Lucky changed my life for the better. He is, by far, the best thing to have come into my life. He's been my companion through thick and thin - including my own cancer journey that started in the spring of 2011, less than six months after Karen, the boys mom, passed away. One of my memories of that time is that after my first round of "red devil" chemo I was asleep for eighteen hours. I had housemates, but in terms my care - and his - I was alone. I woke up with Lucky wrapped around my head like a hat. He's been my teddy bear at night for 15.5 years.... We've lived in several parts of New York, with my mother and father during the last year of my dad's life, and, since April 2021, in Blacksburg, VIrginia. He's been buried here in a private pet cemetery.

I'm sure I'll have more to say at some point, but that's all I can say today. It's been hard without my beautiful boy, my beautiful Lucky boy.