Why trusting the universe gives me such a headache

'When the student is ready, the teacher will arrive' and all those trusting remarks about synchronicity. I want to be that kind of person. So I say, look, universe, I have a place in my life for a cat. Nothing happens. In true American style, I haul myself to animal shelters, undertake Marten and Toby, lovely cats both with some quirks and incredibly effective bloodlust (house full of Mafia-style warnings like chipmunk head in the living room, leg in the far kitchen....). Excellent cats. I still want a nice sane kitten, preferably a queen.

The universe, doing rather badly by some of my friends --last summer's woman with lumpectomy has just finished radiation, doing fine, now her husband is having bypass surgery on Halloween; you wonder if the fun ever stops and then you hope not, to say nothing of all of Southern California) does not have time to cough up a kitten.

A sweet cat shows up in Canterbury Shaker Village, whom Sarah feeds and cultivates. After some days and some discussion, the cat strolled into the cat carrier (! ?? !!!!) herself on Monday and began to spend a quiet few days in quarantine here, provisionally named Autumn. Sarah put up a poster.

We had the slightly weird, mostly okay last archaeology lab before said cardiac patient's surgery last night. Sarah appeared and said the cat's distraught owner had turned up, clutching the poster and saying "Miss Tucker ran away just after I moved here, I'm so glad you found her, her brother misses her so much!" Sarah drove to my house and picked up the cat and I reflected how tired I am of loving beings that are not mine to love. (You can insert the appropriate Christian, Buddhist, fatalist remarks about how _everyone/everything_ is on loan, etc, but some beings are on even less of a loan than others.)

Turns out the cat I have been calling Autumn is not Miss Tucker at all. So Autumn is going to spend the next few days in Sarah's bedroom in Canterbury, not amusing her two queen kitties one little bit. Doug and I are trying to remain open to either bonding with Autumn or being delighted her people have her back (this cat has been deeply loved, unless she is a Bodhisattva cat). We have two brown female tabbies lost in the Canterbury area in the last couple of weeks, God knows where Miss Tucker is, and her brother still misses her.