“Shoot, kiddo, all my cats are take-ins. The home won’t let anyone who lives there add to what they bring with them, so that leaves me.”

Mrs. Patterson’s family put her into the Whispering Aspens assisted living center over fifteen years ago. Which is crazy, considering they were all set to give up on her, and she’s lived just fine on her own for as long as I’ve been alive. But she’ll have the last laugh, letting them pay for her supposed care, while she spent their much-coveted inheritance on a town home in our complex. When she’s not hanging out at “The Wal-Marts,” she spends most of her time at Whispering Aspens, but it’s more of a volunteer thing and a cover for the semi-surprise visits of her family, who all live in Denver. They have absolutely no clue about her town house or her cats or any of it. Especially not their dwindling “early retirement plan.”

“Mrs. Patterson, can I ask you something?”

“You’ve been asking me questions all these years—now you’re telling me I had a choice?” She playfully waggled her bushy brows at me.

Oh, a regular riot, she is.

“Does it get easier? Having people leave you all the time?”

“People don’t leave you, dear. They just die.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, and you’re not listening. You think people leave this earth when they die, but they don’t. Nothing is finished. Not really.” Then she sputtered, “I’ve never wanted a damn cat. Hate the darn things. But who else is gonna do it?”

She didn’t even like cats? Wow. Suddenly the smell of her wasn’t so offensive. From now on, when I smell her I will think of friendship and love. And cat piss. Who was I kidding? She reeked like a meth lab.

I expected her to say something profound after that, maybe along the lines of: “There is just as much beauty in birth as there is in death, and it changes our lives just the same. They both add things to us and take things away. It just so happens death adds cats to mine.”

Instead, she told me, “Sometimes when someone you know dies, you just have to take the crap that’s thrown at you. As long as it’s not the cats throwing their own crap, I’m good.”

I had no idea how to respond, so I went with: “I got five pounds of flour.”