The power of the mind or pure coincidence??

I'm diverting from my normal scrapbook-related post and I'm going to share a little story that happened last November.  It still amazes me every time I think about it.  The background story is that I've always been a cat lover.  I'm drawn to them. I adore them.  But having a cat of my own was out of the question because my husband developed cat allergies years ago (even though he had a cherished cat as a child).  For some reason I started thinking and talking about cats quite a bit last year, and my girls and I even jokingly asked my husband a couple of times if we could get a cat and he could get allergy shots.   Ummmmmm . . . . no.

One afternoon last November my girls and I were sitting at the table looking at magazines.  I was going through an old Creating Keepsakes magazine, and I came upon this page:

At this point I don't even remember what the article was about because I immediately ripped out the page from the magazine and showed my girls.  I squealed "Ooooooooooohhhhhhh, look at this sweet kitty!!  I want him!"  My girls oohed and ahhed over the pictures of the kitten too.  I cooed over the picture a bit more and then I stuck the magazine page up on our china cabinet (I sometimes display the girls' artwork, holiday cards, etc. there) so that I could admire the photos of that sweet kitten for a while longer.  

Now here comes the weird -- and wonderful -- part of the story.  That same day, no more than an hour after I found the pictures of this sweet kitty in my CK magazine and declared that I wanted him -- my husband arrived home and my girls opened the front door to greet him, then Danielle yelled, "Mommy, there's a cat on our porch!!!!"  I immediately came to see what she was talking about, and sure enough a sweet little cat was sitting right there at our front door.  Now mind you, we live on a very busy street in a busy neighborhood, and we rarely see cats wandering around.  In the 10+ years I've lived in this house, we've never had a cat actually come up to our door.  This is the cat that showed up on our porch that day:

The girls and I immediately thought, 'WOW!  He looks just like the kitty in the photo!'  Sure he's older (he's estimated to be between 1 and 2 years old), but the coloring is the same as the kitten in the magazine photos.  It was actually my sweet husband who gave the cat the okay to come into our house for a bit -- despite his 'alleged' allergies.  So this friendly little cat walked right into our house and the girls and I immediately fell in love with him.  I expected my husband to start sneezing and watering up, but he didn't have much of an allergic reaction at all.  We decided to name the cat "Smokey".

To make a long story short  (yeah, too late, I know), Smokey kept coming back to our house.  He even brought us a mouse one day, which is a sign of true love from a cat.   We attempted to find his owner with no success.  Smokey could come and go as he pleased, but he was at our house pretty much all the time.  We finally determined that he was most likely a stray, and we officially took him in.  Thankfully my husband doesn't seem to have significant allergies to Smokey, and he's grown quite attached to our furry addition to the family.  As long as he washes his hands after he plays with Smokey (which he does often!), he's totally fine.

Smokey has now become a beloved member of our family.

 Here's hubby and Smokey taking a little catnap together on the couch:

The other interesting thing is that my beloved stepfather passed away a few weeks before Smokey showed up.  We were very close to my stepfather ("Papa"), so his loss left a void.   I said at the time that Papa must have sent Smokey to us because he knew how much joy he would bring to our family.

So tell me, do you think it was the power of the mind that brought Smokey to us?  Serendipity?   A Premonition?  Or pure coincidence?

Stay tuned for Chapter 2 . . . we're adopting a kitten so Smokey will have a companion.  Fingers crossed that they get along!