Reasons why.

 

 There's just something about good friends...that's hard to put your finger on.  What is it, that throughout the years, is the invisible glue that binds relationships?  If someone were to ask me why the people closest to me are there, the words I'd use to explain my love for them would feel somewhat hollow.  The reason being, perhaps, is that it is difficult to capture in words the flow of friendship as it develops.  Those relationships become so thick, that pinning them down with a word like "funny" or "smart" seems to only scratch the surface.  

Those are a few words that I could use to define the reason for the love that binds me to my friend Shandra.  Unfortunately, they don't sufficiently define how and why I love this small human so.  I will, however tell a short story from one of our recent escapades, which  frames something undefinable that I adore about her.

To say Shandra loves cats, is an understatement.  When a stray cat made it's temporary home at Jewell Gardens recently, she squealed with glee, promptly named it Kiki (she calls all cats kiki) Quiche, and made it a home out of a wine box and kept it at her desk.  The fact that her beloved cat Baker has turned senile and even meaner in his old age is the ultimate insult and betrayal to her, after years of her feeding him shrimp even though it made her gag.  So on our road trip last weekend, which ended in a nearby town of Haines, Alaska...I wasn't shocked that she brought up a cat. 

She said that she had once met the fattest cat she'd ever seen in this town.  This was quite exciting to me.  Reason being, I know she has seen A LOT of cats, and to think that the fattest one could be waddling in our midst made my heart palpitate.  I am a sucker for fat animals.  

As she is telling us this fact, she looks up the street  we are walking on, and says..."Oh, THERE he is!"

Sure as the day is long...there was the fattest cat I had ever seen laying on the cement, seeming to say to Shandra with his eyes, "What took you so long?"  She runs up to this monstrous cat and hoists it's obese body into her arms. She then proceeds to tell us that she and her husband had actually named this cat when they had met him here last.  His name was Leftovers.  This sent all of us into a fit of hysterics, for obvious reasons, and because that is just brilliant and just so her. 

As she flew away from Skagway yesterday, for perhaps the last time, I felt no threat of this new space between us keeping me away from my friend for long.  With friends who so celebrate a story about a fat cat named Leftovers, there is nothing that can keep those hearts from laughing together again.