Late one afternoon in December, my wife, Stacy, and I returned home to find something white and fluffy in our driveway, something that wasn’t freshly fallen snow, which would have been strange in Southern California. It was a cat, pure white—not the kind of cat you see every day.
“Where did you come from?” I asked him when I parked the car. Stacy and I got out to investigate.
He certainly wasn’t shy. The cat let us approach and, with tail sticking straight up, told us both that he was friendly. When I bent down to stroke his head, he purred.
“He has no collar,” my wife pointed out. “Looks like he’s a stray.”
I hated to think of this little guy fending for himself in the wild. Stacy and I exchanged glances. I knew we were thinking the same thing. We had a new cat, an early Christmas present.
We already had seven cats—all rescues we’d taken in over the years— so we had everything we needed to make our new guest feel right at home. We’d keep him in the garage for now, we decided—just until we could get him checked out at the veterinarian’s. We didn’t want him passing along fleas or ear mites to our other cats, but we made him as cozy as possible.
He was probably used to being alone, but the garage was definitely warmer than outside. I brought out some food and water, while my wife found a comfy, red fleece blanket for him to cuddle up with.
The next day, when we got home from work, Stacy and I were greeted by a familiar sight: a pure white cat waiting for us in the driveway.
“Oh, no!” Stacy said. “The cat got out!” That seemed impossible—unless he could come and go as he pleased, like an angel with whiskers.
“What’s going on, buddy?” I asked, scooping him up. He wriggled around in my arms, like he wanted to get back in the garage. “Okay, we’ll get you inside.”
I lifted the garage door and stared. Was I seeing double? There, sitting pretty on his red blanket, was the white cat we’d found yesterday. I looked at the cat in my arms, then back at the one on the blanket. They were practically identical.
When I let him down, the second cat ran to the other. They both purred and rubbed up against each other like old friends.
“They must be brothers!” Stacy said. “Twins!”
We never discovered them to have previous owners, and so, of course, they became permanent members of our family. Kris and Kringle, our Christmas angels.
