Clarisse McClellan's Daughter

Thank you. I needed this, more than I can express.

My son is autistic. He was 7 when his guardian-cat came to him (that "barn cat" did things like shove him back to the middle of the yard if he got too close to the road...7 pound cat, 50 pound boy). Tiny, with incredibly soft smoke-grey fur; I tried to name her Velvet. Our boy was barely using full sentences by then, and conversations were still conducted in movie and book quotations, but he said no, her name was Sophia. Asked why, he said simply "she told me." His grandmother asked how she had told him. "In my head" he said. "She said her name was Sophia" and that, so far as he was concerned, was that. Everyone else put it down to either autistic communication difficulties or small-child imagination, or both. But having watched that cat guard and guide, comfort and teach her "big noisy kitten", I have never doubted he spoke as literally about that as he did everything else.