A Christmas gift

Our second Christmas without Ian (2 down, maybe 20-30 to go?) and we made our trek to the Ballard cemetary to place fresh flowers at Ian's grave, like we have done so many times over the past 18 months but this time was different.  This time, there was a gift waiting for us.  Ian had a visitor, who we dubbed 'Oliver'.  When we drove up to Ian's grave (gosh, that sounds so wrong to say....Ian's grave) there was this beautiful, calico cat just sitting up on top of his headstone like he owned the place.  In all our time out here at Ballard, we'd never seen a cat.  We walked up to him, expecting him to run away but it was obvious, he meant to stay around and just wanted to be petted.  In fact, Eric had a hard time getting him to get off the headstone so he could clean it. He stayed around the whole time we were there and he was the friendliest cat. Amy named him Oliver and we seriously thought of taking him home; he was friendly and beautiful and was there at just the right moment.  He was also obviously clean and well fed and therefore probably belonged to someone who loved him.  But we toyed with the idea that he was a sign; maybe he was a sweeter version of Emmett (who's ashes we had secretly (until now) buried next to Ian, maybe he was a Christmas present????).

We asked him if he wanted to come home with us and he said yes (we are fluent in meow) so I went in search of the groundskeepers to see if they had a 'cemetery cat'.  Unfortunately, for us, he did have a home with the neighbors living next door.  The groundskeeper said he comes back and forth but usually stays in a certain area of the cemetery - today, for whatever reason, he ventured into our area.  So he wasn't a sign - he was a gift and for a brief moment, he was ours & Ians'
.