She sat on a stoop with a smile so big you’d think she didn’t have a care in the world. But you knew she did. Her appearance said she likely spent a lot of time outdoors. She had a cat too, tucked inside her half-zipped coat, then outside her coat, then behind her knees, then back inside her coat. I was just finishing a Pop-Up Pongo, this time under the bridge, peeking into some of the homeless sites to see if anyone needed pet food.

A few months ago a woman donated a used laundry cart, like the one in the photo. She included it with some other items, saying only that she no longer needed it. We had a hunch it hadn’t been used for laundry, likely something far more important. She asked if we wanted it and before anyone could respond, she said “you’ll know what to do with it when the time is right.” A few days later my regular Pop-Up Pongo cart broke so I began using the little laundry cart. It became my Kibble Cart. The tires were loose and wobbly, the whole thing was kind of rickety. Meaning you could not move too fast with it because if you moved too fast it would fall over. So in its own way, this worn and rickety Kibble Cart forced me to slow down, to be in the moment. Maybe that was the plan all along.

I saw the woman on the stoop when I was almost back to my car. I had a few bags of cat food left and some blankets; I stopped to say hello. I asked her cat’s name and she said Clover, “she’s my lucky charm.” Clover was now tucked directly beneath her chin like another little head and they were both looking right at me. And to reinforce her point, she said “you should have seen me before I found Clover.” She shared a story about what happens to a woman when life goes sideways and the person you trusted was no longer able to be trusted. And how everything you thought you had was suddenly gone. That was her story. It happened some time ago but she was still so frightened by it that she would not share her name.

But to watch her and this cat, it was poetic. They were one. And then Clover was on me too, stretching her leash far as she could to smell my shoe, then my knee, then my hand and then boom, right into my lap.

And there we sat for several minutes. Not talking in words but still talking. The truth was, sitting there was peaceful. And that’s when I realized I was smiling too. Just like she was. Maybe Clover really was a lucky charm.

She asked if the cat food in my cart was for my cat, I told her I did not have a cat. So logically she asked why I had the food since we never talked about what I was doing. But before I could answer, she was proud to tell me, if I ever did get a cat, that the Pongo food was good food and I should use it. How did she know? That’s what she feeds Clover. She told me where she gets it, how she sometimes stands in line for it, but she had no idea that I was part of The Pongo Fund. It just never came up.

She said she used to have a cart like mine and she missed it because Clover used to ride inside. And right on cue Clover leaped inside the cart and snuggled up atop the small mountain of food and blankets. And that’s why when I left to walk back to my car, the cat food, the blankets and the Kibble Cart stayed behind, now in the possession of a kind woman with a big smile and a lucky charm cat named Clover.

The woman who donated the cart was right, when she said “you’ll know what to do with it when the time is right.”

And this is why we Pongo.

Sit. Stay. Eat. Live. thepongofund.org