When I was growing up, it was a Logan family tradition to go to Mom Mom and Pop Pop’s house  for Christmas. We were a big bunch when we all got together —  over thirty of us. Always there was Aunt Martha. She wasn’t really our aunt. She was an elderly widowed family friend of my grandparents who had nowhere else to go on Christmas. So Aunt Martha joined the Logan crew, and became the honorary aunt of us grandchildren.

Many years later, I visited a cat shelter, Animalkind, in Hudson NY. I was helping a friend pick out a new feline companion. That cat, Olana, went on to live a happy life in my friend’s home. But when I was there, I couldn’t help but notice a skinny old cat perched high on a shelf in a corner. There was something wrong with her eye, and she looked very lonely. “Granny” spent her days defending herself against the 40 or so other cats in the room. She had been at the shelter for almost a year.

I couldn’t get her out of my mind. Several days later, I convinced my husband that we just couldn’t leave Granny to live the rest of her life at that shelter. It was close to my birthday, so that’s always an easier time to convince my husband that we need to bring home another animal.

I named her Aunt Martha. She seemed like that person who had no place to be, and counted on the good will of others.  She was thought to be about 15 years old, having spent most of her life surviving the streets of Hudson, New York. We had to remove her infected eye, but she didn’t seem to mind.

Aunt Martha turned out to be a feisty, opinionated cat. She thought nothing of stealing chicken right out of the frying pan and then fighting off our dogs so she could eat the whole thing. She would swat you if she felt like it. She might have caused damage when she bit us except she didn’t have many teeth. She died loved, and on her own terms. I can’t say she was my favorite cat, but I admired her spunk, and thinking about her makes me smile.