Most mornings are quiet in my neighborhood, but Fridays and Saturdays are even quieter. Most are sleeping in and enjoying their day off, or just waiting until the afternoon to wake up because of the summer heat. Around 11 this morning I heard the loud meowing of a cat. I looked out my window that overlooks our front “yard” and street and saw a little cat in our gate. Not long after I saw another big cat come by. It’s fun seeing cats that aren’t just digging in my trash at midnight. After a couple of minutes of meowing I figured these could become our apartment’s cats. That is, our front “yard” cats. I grabbed a bowl of water and some crushed up chips and brought them down. I wasn’t the only neighbor listening and watching the cats. Around the same time I came out, so did my downstairs neighbors who are an old Arab married couple, speaking only Arabic, along with my across the street neighbors who speak a different dialect of Kurdish from me. Thankfully I can understand my across the street neighbors but my sweet grandparent aged neighbors downstairs and I cannot communicate much. Anyway, the few of us down there went looking for the cats around our building and my car, trying to find where they went. We all proceeded to “shp shp” for the cats. Eventually the cats darted away and that was that. My old Arab neighbor looked at me, looked down at the bowls I brought down, pointed at them and said “meow meow?” with a chuckle and a smile. I nodded my head and laughed along with her. Moments of not being able to communicate but sharing a laugh are some of the sweetest with them. I love my neighborhood and small moments of gathering around things that, at least for me, show me their humanity and my own as well really clearly. We delight in small little things that God has created for our enjoyment and His glory, even if they don’t know it. It feels like a special grace to me and a common grace to them. Here’s to praying the cats come back and eat my offerings to them, and that my neighbors too would know true delight found in Christ.