Harmony the Cat: Closure

Well, up until today… I had talked with someone who was willing to take Harmony in, and to give her a new home. My friend Aimee (OSU MFA alum and poet extraordinaire) helped in my search by posting an entry on her blog.

For some reason, I held off posting on my own blog. Primarily, I was hoping to reach out to my immediate circle of people I knew: friends and family, mostly. I was afraid of posting for the same reasons I was afraid of trying to use something like Craigslist: I wanted Harmony to live with someone I knew.

Today, I got an email from the person who was to take Harmony. We had arranged a meeting date (the 14th), and everything in my mind was set in stone. However, in the email… she told me about how she signed her lease today, and discovered a ton of hidden charges were she to take in a cat as a pet. In going over things, she would incur something around $1,000 in fees if she were to take Harmony.

And as much as she wanted to give Harmony a home, there’s no way her apartment arrangement would allow it.

So – I found myself on the eve of my move, with no real home for my cat. I decided to post about my situation on Twelvestone… and guess what? Amazingly, within about 29 minutes of my call for help… I got a reply.

What ended up happening was incredibly moving, and better than I could have hoped for. Jeff and Michele (aka FlamingJeff and Ms. F) contacted me, and said they wanted to give Harmony a new home. Their cat, Morgaine, was an older cat… and passed away about 8 or 9 months ago. In his message to me, Jeff said “We’re ready,” and wanted to provide Harmony with a place to stay.

They’re roughly two hours away from Chicago, have a spacious house, and are in a neighborhood where Harmony could eventually become an outdoor cat once more. This is all incredibly exciting to me, as it sounds like the ideal place.

Jeff said that he often came home for lunch, and misses having a cat to talk to. At one point in the converastion, Michele grabbed the phone and relayed to me something her mother told her: her mother said that, when she was born again, she wanted to be reincarnated as Michele and Jeff’s cat. What better new parents could one hope for?

Check out the thread on Twelvestone, and all the positive responses that ensued. In hindsight, I’m not sure why I was so hesitant to post about my situation online. In reading over all the comments on Twelvestone, I’ve come to realize that my close circle of friends is actually much larger than I realized. I’m in awe, and quite humbled by the concern and sympathy expressed by so many people – some that I’ve met, and others who only know me through my words.

I’ve met Jeff and Michele on more than one occasion (most recently, Jeff came into town to see Mingus). I can say without hesitation that they’re good people – and that my cat is going to be in warm, loving, fantastic hands.

The process of giving her up is going to be hard, and… to be honest, pretty terrible. But I can’t imagine her in a better place, and I can’t imagine a better scenario. After many weeks of looking, my cat Harmony now officially has a new home.