Yep. That’s a Maranta leucomeura. A scraggly specimen, too. The WideEyedSpouse espied it lurking on the back of a table at the Home Depot. “Special Buy” the tag said. I snorted. What a mess.

The Maranta lives in the WideEyedHousehold now.

You may be unimpressed by this prosaic moment. So would I be except for one extraordinary and upsetting fact. The Maranta can live here because Ancient Wiggins the Cat no longer does.  Old-struck, life-weary, that creaky, foul-tempered and steadfast pal of mine left the building on Saturday morning. By Sunday afternoon the Maranta had moved in, that opportunist.

For eighteen years the household could harbor no plants without inevitable hoorka, hoorka, hoorka noises and slimy green piles on the carpets. Always on the carpet, never on the tile. Eighteen years of raptor intensity attacks on even ears of corn from the farmer’s market left unguarded on the counter. (We once hid them in the oven to prevent the hoorkas, forgot them, found them two weeks later moldering, warm, soft.)

“As soon as that cat goes, I’m getting some plants,” I may have said, staring dark thoughts at his whiskered and smug face. On Sunday I stood among hundreds of lush limbed and tasty looking leaves. My heart ached – I couldn’t do it. Choosing a plant meant admitting that Ancient Wiggins was never coming back. Pathetic and saggy, the Maranta was desperate and sorry enough to be admissible.

I don’t look directly at the Maranta. I approach it sideways, water it here and there, move it around from table to counter back to table because it keeps getting in the way. The Maranta hasn’t made it more than six feet into the house.

This morning several shoots appeared under the torn up, mildew speckled leaves. New growth.