I realized I may have left out one part of the story about the lady at the market who couldn't afford to pay for her groceries…
As I haven't mentioned here lately, I feed feral cats in my back yard. At one point, I was up to four who turned up on my back porch every evening: The Stranger Cat, Max, Lydia and Sylvia. The Stranger Cat, as discussed here, passed away two years ago.
Max — a cat so large that if you wanted to turn him around, you had to employ the PIT maneuver, disappeared in November of that year. I wrote about that here. That left me with the ones I'd named Lydia and Sylvia.
Lydia still comes around. Lydia is the cat who, back in 2008, I spent days trapping so I could take her into the vet for a pussycat abortion and a procedure that guaranteed she could never get that way again. You can see a photo of her here. She still comes around almost every night for chow.
Up until around ten days ago, Sylvia was usually with her. They've become close friends, always nuzzling and watching out for each other. In the photo below, you can see a photo of Sylvia from back in the days when she and Max were, as they say, an item. She's the one on top.
Ten days ago, Sylvia disappeared. There's a lot of construction going on next door to me and I figured that had scared her off…but ten days is a long time to not see a cat who seemed dependent on me for food. I figured either something bad happened to her or she found someplace else to get a steady flow of food and would no longer come this way.
Early in the evening, I fed Lydia and since she was alone again, I decided to just presume Sylvia was gone for good.
Then as mentioned, I went to the market at 3 AM. When I got back, two ladies were waiting on my back steps for me: Lydia and Sylvia. I asked Sylvia where she'd been but with a coy look in her eyes, she refused to tell me. That was okay. I fed her anyway. That's how happy I was to see her.
I don't know why she came back but I can't shake the feeling that it had something do with helping that lady in the market.