Mr. Lucky died. I found out he died the same way I learned he was alive, in a post on Facebook between a political rant and a photo of last night’s dinner. Just yesterday I saw a photo of him and his adopted brother, Mr. Max. They were sleeping the way small animals and children do, in a mix of limbs forming a pile of sweetness.

From the start, he was a long shot. His adopted Mom found him on a sidewalk and knew, right away, that something was wrong. She loved him anyway…in an irrational way…in a way someone loves a cat she grew up with…or the way someone who knows what it feels like to be kicked to the curb loves a kitten who was.

Daily postings revealed sleepless nights spent wielding an eye-dropper in a manner enticing enough to encourage the kitten to eat. I read her words. I studied her photographs. I imagined what it would be like to be completely responsible for the welfare of something so utterly innocent and gray and furry and sweet. I soon began every morning with a click of the mouse, anxious to know how Mr. Lucky was doing.

I’m not a cat person, but I’ve lived with cats. As a kid, we always had cats. My mother loved cats. Her favorite was named Cleo. She called her Cleo-Meo. She was calico and long-haired and if anyone other than my mother deigned to touch her, she left marks. Her death, at a ripe old age, devastated my mother. She never replaced her.

Many years ago I found a stray kitten in the ivy surrounding our shed or, to be more accurate, he found me. A white and gray ball of fluff, he approached me, mewling. I picked him up, cradling him against my chest. Needle-like claws pierced my shirt as he climbed to curl up in the spot where my neck meets my shoulder, leaving me no choice.

“Look what I found.”, I said to my partner, the cat-lover, whose face softened as he reached out to touch the kitten. “Too bad we can’t keep him.”

“We have to keep him.”, Roger countered. “He can’t live out there!”

Plucking the kitten off my shoulder, he walked away.

“He can stay in the spare room. We’ll keep the dogs away from him.”

The kitten lived in our spare bedroom for nearly a month. Keeping his end of the bargain, Roger cleaned up after him. In exchange, I relented to his suggestion that we allow the kitten to visit our bedroom at night before we went to sleep.

I held my breath every time Roger opened the door separating our dogs from the tiny kitten. They knew he was there. I’d seen them sniffing around the door.

On that night, I listened as I always did. The knob turned, the door creaked, and what happened next can only be described as chaos. I maintained my position against a stack of pillows on my side of the bed, even as I knew the horror taking place down the hall. I steeled myself against the words he’d say, making it true and, when he said them, my grief poured forth in a scream of accusations. There were only two possible explanations for what happened; stupidity and carelessness. To this day I can’t accept one without wondering about the other.

When Lucky’s mother offered her friends an opportunity to participate in his care, I jumped at the chance. Others followed suit. Soon Lucky had a following, and a special kind of formula, and a cozy bed. I clicked the button that would magically send money across the country to a person I’d never met to assist in the care of a cat I only knew from pictures on the internet. Even as I did it, it felt a little crazy. But isn’t life a little crazy? Doesn’t every day present us with risks we wouldn’t take if we thought about them, even a little bit, ahead of time?

The greatest risk of all, of course, is love. There are no guarantees with love. You may not be loved back. You may invest lots of time and effort, and a large amount of your self, in someone who can’t or won’t reciprocate. You may carry a child and raise him into adulthood only to watch, desperately, as he makes choices that end his life and, in many ways, yours as well. Or you may take a chance on a long shot kitten whose death hurts more than you expected. What matters is taking the chance.