The story of large gray cat

Twelfth Night in St. Bethlehem

If light is in your heart, you will find your way home.

~Rumi

Our family made its eighth Army move during the summer of 1987. We were to wait in Clarksville, Tennessee, while my husband George completed a thirteen-month unaccompanied tour in Korea. Our six-year-old son Rick, our four-year-old daughter Starr, Barney the Sheepdog, our large long-haired gray cat named Q, and I were in a rental house near a place called Two Rivers.

My task was to have a house built for us and have it ready when George returned in the late summer of 1988. He would be assigned to the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, which is adjacent to Clarksville.

We had decided to build in an area known as St. Bethlehem. To arrive at our lot, we had to pass a neighborhood called Rudolphtown. Every morning, the kids and I would drive from Two Rivers to our lot to take pictures. Every afternoon, we would go to the St. Bethlehem post office to mail pictures of the progress to Daddy in Korea.

As we went back and forth between Two Rivers and St. Bethlehem, the kids and I would sing, “Over Two Rivers and through the woods…” On passing Rudolphtown, we would launch into “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” I even joked that our daughter was the little Starr of St. Bethlehem.

If we were lucky, we would be in our new house before Thanksgiving. Even though Daddy would not be there for Christmas, we would make a home and memories. He would be home by summer.

The days passed. The house rose. The pictures were mailed. Shortly before Thanksgiving we loaded ourselves and Barney into our car. Q, protesting, was loaded into a pet crate in the back of our Jeep. The move was an adventure. We slept on the floor for a week until the movers arrived.

Barney adjusted quickly, but Q spooked easily and was skittish. When the workers and movers arrived, I put Q in his crate in the basement. I asked everyone not to enter the basement. If they had to go there, they were told not to let the cat out of the crate.

Well, it happened anyway. Somehow, Q disappeared.

Thanksgiving was subdued. We had much to be thankful for, but no Q to enjoy turkey with us. Q was Starr’s special friend, and his loss hurt her most of all.

An odd thing happened one day. In the grocery store, I ran into a real-estate agent who told me we were lucky to have left the rental when we did. Someone had broken a window in the basement and gotten into the house. (I recalled that when we lived there, the window had been cracked.) There was no real damage from the break-in, but blood and gray hair were all over the window and basement floor.

Then, I knew. Q, our large gray cat, must have somehow found his way back, crossing two large rivers. It was perhaps a seven-mile journey. Finding no one home, he must have been frightened. I went to the rental house, but I couldn’t find him.

As the Christmas season approached, the kids and I would read stories and legends surrounding the magic of Christmas. They loved the story of Twelfth Night, when the Star of Bethlehem led the Wise Men to their destination.

Christmas came and went, as happy as Rick, Starr, Barney and I could make it with George still in Korea and Q who knows where.

We had cousins in Nashville, Tennessee, whom we visited for the day on January 6th. While returning to St. Bethlehem late that night, Starr kept nagging me to hurry. “We have to be home by midnight,” she said.

“Why, baby?” I asked her.

She replied, “It’s Twelfth Night, and Q is following the star of St. Bethlehem home. We have to be there to greet him.”

While she had garbled the story and misunderstood much, she had the unshakable belief that Q would come home that night.

I was sick with dread, wondering how I could explain it her. Q had never been outside the Two Rivers rental house. He had never seen the outside of our new house in St. Bethlehem, having been transported there in a crate. I had to admit, however, he did seem to have found his way back to the old house, given that gray cat hair in the basement.

Oh, me of little faith, and she of great faith… our little Army family needed a miracle, and we received one. For one little girl named Starr, on Twelfth Night, it happened. Just before midnight, in St. Bethlehem, Tennessee, Q came home.

— Anne Oliver —

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