By Donald A. Ranard

“In memory of Amy Ranard”

He’s an orange tabby, a big-bellied, easy-goin’ good ol’ boy from Wilmington, North Carolina, 16 when we bring him back to our home in Arlington, Virginia, after the sudden death of my sister, his owner—wait, “pet parent,” the preferred term among animal lovers—though Goober at 16 is 80 in human years and therefore older than his parent, who died alone in her apartment, her body found four days later, Goober by her side. Turns out the good ol’ boy belly is a tumor and Goober might die at any moment, says the vet, who wants to put him down. I’m a dog person, not a cat person (I know, I know, in the eyes of cat people, that makes me a control freak, even a closet misogynist, cats being independent, inscrutable, and, regardless of gender, feminine), but I love my sister and decide to do what she would have wanted me to do—let Goober live out what’s left of his life, until there’s pain—and that evening we take him outside in the last light of a late summer day to see and smell and hear what he, an indoor cat, has never seen or smelled or heard before. He sits up in my lap, suddenly alert, twitching his tail and jerking his head back and forth and up and down, trying to keep up with it all: cardinals and crows jockeying for position at the bird feeder, squirrels leaping from tree to tree, our resident rabbit nibbling the woodland phlox, a lone flickering firefly, a breeze rustling the leaves, carrying scents no human nose can ever know. He looks up at me in disbelief. It’s something, isn’t it Goober? I say. Overwhelmed, he curls himself into a ball in my lap and falls asleep, dreaming of his strange new world that has such creatures in it. My wife looks at us and smiles. “I guess he doesn’t know you’re not a cat person,” she says.

PS On Saturday evening, January 31, 2026, a year and a half after we brought Goober home, he passed away peacefully, lying between us on his favorite spot on the couch.

©2026 Donald A. Ranard

In addition to True Stories Well Told, Donald A. Ranard’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, New World Writing Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review, Vestal Review, The Washington Post, The Best Travel Writing, and many other publications. In 2022, his prize-winning play ELBOW APPLE CARPET SADDLE BUBBLE placed second in Savage Wonder’s annual playwriting contest. Before settling in Arlington, VA, he lived and worked in Asia, Europe, and Latin America.