Should I start with adopting a kitten on impulse or being left with a dog? ( Anything to gloss over nearly kidnapping a baby in between).

I’ll start at the end instead of the beginning. The landscaper gave me a quote and an approximate day. Ten minutes after he’d let the phone rang and the landscaper said, “I have to ask a big favor.”

I waited, figuring he must need to reschedule the work.

“I forgot my dog on your street,” he said.

“You forgot your dog,” I yelled, from the sheer joy of having the upper hand. “How could you forget your dog. Do you do this often?”

“No,” he said. “This is the first time.”

“Should I start calling his name for him on the street?”

“I left him tied up,” the poor man finally got out. “His name is Rex.”

I peered down the street. Sure enough peering back at me was a small dog tied to a tree on the planting strip.

“Will Rex be staying with me long?” I asked.

For an agreeable hour I had a dog named Rex. I’ve never owned a dog so I wanted to show him off like he was an engagement ring or a new baby. It seemed so fitting that a dog had landed in my lap.

It all started at the beginning of the heat wave. I’d ridden my bicycle to South Lake Union to meet a friend for lunch. At the intersection of Westlake and Denny there was a bright yellow truck. I assumed it was more street food, but instead it was the Humane Society. I fell in love with the first little kitten in the window.

The funny thing about the kitten was that she looked exactly like the one I had at home, minus 13 years. I was seeing my cat as she looked when I adopted her from the pound at three months old.

Never mind that this new kitten had been surrendered as being aggressive, I had to take the younger version home with me, without consulting the older model or the 54-year-old partner.

Later, as we tried to soothe the older cat’s ruffled feelings and fur, I told Martin, “I have no idea why I did this.”

“Oh, I do,” he said. “You wanted to have another young thing in the house.”

As though bringing home a kitten was somehow related to my only child leaving for college. If that was true then it was lucky I had not stumbled on a miniature model of my daughter instead of the cat.

But then I did.

Within three days of my impulsive adoption, the kitten and I were sitting together on the bench at Ballard Animal Hospital. Before there was Animal Planet I used to sit at Ballard Animal Hospital and think about filming a reality program there.

The scratch of a big dog’s nails on the linoleum, the meows coming out of handheld carriers, ancient cats and dogs wrapped in towels and held against their owner’s chest. The stories I could tell. When I had a cat in kidney failure I practically lived in that waiting room.

It’s calmer now they take appointments but in the corner there was a mesh bag with a small dog inside next to a car seat containing a curly-haired baby. The man with the huge dog at the counter talking to the vet was related to either the baby or the dog.

The baby was old enough to reach for his foot and would have put it in his mouth except for the pacifier. He had dark curls, like my daughter did when she was young. He had blue eyes; my daughter’s eyes started as blue but then turned green.

I played with the baby’s toes and behind the pacifier he smiled at me. We did a bit of peek-a-boo. I don’t usually play with babies out in public, probably because they’re not usually on their own.

He fussed a bit so his father came over and handed him a Ballard Animal Hospital newsletter. Alone again we played tug of war with the paper. The baby and I both laughed.

After the man paid he had to figure out how much he could carry to the car. For his first trip he took the medicine and two dogs. He left the baby. Is this a test, I wondered?

Before the man returned an assistant called us to an examination room. I hated to leave the baby. “I’m sure his dad will be right back,” I said to the receptionist. We both looked at the curly-haired baby waving his bare toes.

Did I pass the test, or fail?

The kitten got sicker before she got better. For three days all that went in her body was water that I squeezed into her mouth by syringe. On the fourth day she woke up and started eating, drinking, and torturing the older cat. Then today for an hour, I got a dog.

My reward for walking away from the baby that looked just like my little girl did 18 years ago, before she was able to go so far away from me.

Peggy Sturdivant can be reached atlargeinballard@yahoo.com.