The phone was ringing stridently - no doubt Liz calling again about Christmas dinner tomorrow. Edna let the answering machine take the call. She just wasn't up to arguing with Liz again. Since Joe had died, Edna simply did not have the energy to cope with Liz and her noisy inlaws, to say nothing about those cats she surrounded herself with. There were so many hungry people in the world that Edna simply couldn't imagine why Liz chose to rescue every mangy cat that crossed her path. It was like she had a "sucker" sign emblazoned over her front door. Still, most of them seemed to thrive under Liz's care, and she almost always was able to find good homes for them, once she fattened them up and had them fixed.
Edna sighed as she turned on the lights to the small Christmas tree. She really didn't have anything against animals, but she'd much rather have a grandchild to spoil than the annoyance of creatures that had no real use, when you came right down to it. A grandchild to buy Christmas and birthday gifts for; to take to the park on sunny days; to show how to make angels in the snow.
She put the kettle on for tea, and rolled her aching shoulders as she put away the groceries. She decided to save the ready-roasted chicken for an early dinner tomorrow and heat a can of soup for dinner. Last year she and Joe had munched on pizza Christmas Eve and toasted the birth of the new day with glasses of milk and chocolate chip cookies. They never had been much for tradition, but Christmas Eve always was a special day, because it was the anniversary of the date he had proposed to her.
Some time later, Edna settled back in her lounge chair and flicked on the television. She thought "The Gift of the Magi" was on tonight, but couldn't remember what time. She glanced around for the TV section of the paper, then remembered that she hadn't seen it on the doorstep earlier. The boy was late again, she supposed.
Just then, she heard a soft thump against the front door. "Must have been reading my mind," she grumbled to herself, as she went to get the paper. Upon opening the door, Edna saw, not the Friday Times, but the gray cat she'd been avoiding all week, huddled against the top step, its ragged coat crusted with snow, which had piled up against the stoop.
"Shoo, kitty! Go on home, now. I don't like cats!" she told it.
The cat looked up at her with amazingly golden eyes, a look that pierced right through to the center of her core. It stood up with difficulty, and Edna then noticed its swollen belly and distended nipples. "Oh dear," she whispered. "You poor thing! I suppose you can come in until it stops snowing, and then you must go home, because I really don't like cats." She opened the door and the cat came to life, rubbing against Edna's leg as she entered the warm house.
Inside, Edna cast around for something to feed the cat. Her (and the swollen abdomen and prominent nipples indicated it was a female) ribs were prominent and her eyes were large globes in the narrow face. Opening the refrigerator, Edna spotted the deli bag with the chicken. "Ahhh, well, I suppose I can share a bit with you. I certainly can't eat a whole chicken by myself, anyway, and I can't even let a cat go hungry."
She watched the cat eating hungrily, and told her, "I suppose I should give you a name, only for tonight, because you'll surely have to leave tomorrow. I think I'll call you Mary. My word, how do cats eat and purr at the same time?"
