Floating on a Pachelbel Cloud
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: Lessons Learned from My Cat
By Judith Gussmann

There are two ways to forget about life’s worries: music and cats.
~Albert Schweitzer

I live alone and I’m seventy-six. I found the pandemic especially lonely. Initially, my daughter shopped for me, but — concerned about the higher death rate among elders — she wouldn’t touch me. Even with hearing aids on, I couldn’t understand what people said when wearing masks. Webinars and Zoom proved an unexpected blessing. Every spoken word came through loud and clear. Nonetheless, the COVID-enforced confinement morphed into a sense of disoriented isolation. I missed having guests over. I missed the outside world I’d participated in. Mostly, I yearned to touch a live, warm being. I remembered the rhesus monkey studies. Without touch, some of them died. I felt like a rhesus.

Eventually, I decided to adopt a cat. “I’m looking specifically for a lap cat,” I explained over the phone to someone at the pet shelter. Everything transpired at a COVID distance. (Keep reading)