Our Rian

In the last Poetic Blessings message I posted, I wrote, “We’re holding on, believing that something beautiful is around the corner.” Three days after I wrote that, something beautiful did indeed come into our lives. His name is Rian, and this is his story.

On the morning of August 17th, Monty woke me up and told me that a friend of ours had something to show us. This isn’t just any friend—this friend is the one who dropped everything to be with Seamus the night he passed away because I couldn’t be, having had spinal surgery the day before. She’s also the friend who cares for just about any abandoned animal in this town, especially cats. The only thing bigger than her knowledge of animals is her heart. So when Monty said she wanted to show us something, I had an idea of what it might be.

I was right. Our friend came in, carrying a small kennel. Inside was the tiniest scrap of a kitten I’ve ever seen. Our friend had found him under a bush that morning—he’d been abandoned by his mother. Our friend took him out of the kennel and put him in my lap. He curled up and went to sleep. Our friend told us she’d be back in a couple of hours, so Monty and I had some time alone with him. He mostly just slept while we marveled at his size. By the time our friend came back, we had decided to keep him—as long as Mackin and Carrick got along with him. We’d even named him—Rian River Phillips. Rian (pronounced Ree-yun) is an Irish name meaning “little king,” in honor of the king who came before him—our Seamus, who we called King James. Rian’s middle name, River, is for the Joni Mitchell song. It had been in my head constantly since the night Seamus passed away. In my heartbreak, I kept thinking of the line, “I wish I had a river I could skate away on.”

And now we had a Rian River. Our friend offered to keep him until he was a little bigger and could feed himself. (I’m still recovering from surgery, which our friend was concerned about.) So for the next several days, she had him full-time, and we had short visits with him. He mostly slept while he was here—he hadn’t even figured out what to do with his back feet yet. He was like a newborn horse, all wobbly legs and wide eyes. Then three days ago, our friend found another abandoned kitten who would require the same kind of care she’d been giving Rian. So Monty and I brought Rian home full time.

The first afternoon we had him, he slept in my lap. And then he woke up. Except for a few naps and some sleep at night, it seems like he hasn’t gone back to sleep since then. He’s a handful—literally and figuratively. He has explored every nook and cranny of our upstairs. He tries to climb the walls. He prances around sideways, hoping to get the attention of his brothers. He plays on my computer keyboard. He fights his own reflection that he sees in my phone. He sneaks up on anything that moves—toes, fingers, and his brothers. And his brothers—once they figured out that Rian was here to stay and that he was indeed a cat, despite his size, have started to respond to him. The three of them talk to each other in little chirps. Carrick has had to teach him a lesson about biting, with a gentle smack, but Monty and I think that once Rian is bigger, the three of them will be the best of friends.

So this is our family now. It’s not the family we had at the beginning of summer. And I still miss Seamus so much that my heart breaks a million times a day. But it’s starting to heal. When Rian crawls into my lap, purring more loudly than you would think possible, given his size, my heart heals a little more. When he looks up into my eyes and blinks at me, I think of my own words about “something beautiful,” and I’m reminded of the power of hope. I didn’t know Rian existed when I wrote that, but I did know about hope—the belief that if I just held on, God would bring something beautiful into the middle of my pain and brokenness. And here he is. Our Rian.

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