Listen to the keyclicks, then, and see how these disparate elements converge.

For years Deb has made daily visits to a soap opera fan site called The Cat House Mercury Players "One Life to Live" Guestbook. It gets its name (everything in this story has multiple names) from the old Orson Wells theater company, and from Caitlin, the Cat House webmistress. It is the wide latitude Caitlin allows at her Guestbook site that permits outrageous digressions and off-topic subconversations, including one about a little lost kitty, to develop.

And so on to the cat. One of the people Deb chats with is Anita, based in Reva, Virginia. Another webfriend is Kassandra, based in Bryan, Ohio. A third is Ariel, who makes her physical abode in Madison, Wisconsin.

One day, in chat mode, Anita mentioned that a real cat, the kind that purrs and has a tail, had arrived the night before, cold and hungry, at her Virginia door. It was a nice cat, but Anita, alas, was allergic to cats.

When Anita mentioned the cat (temporary name "Miss Kitty") in chat, Deb leapt a powerful, intuitive leap. She decided in an instant that she wanted more than anything in the world to adopt Miss Kitty, and keep her warm and fed on her lap in the brick house in Wisconsin.

But 1,217 miles separated Deb and cat. And Deb is in no shape to drive.

So who should come to the rescue but the members of the Mercury Players. Anita, Kassandra, and Ariel put their heads together and came up with this plan and itinerary:

Anita, with husband Gary (his actual name), toy poodle Susie (Miss Kitty's best friend), and cat Miss Kitty would leave Reva very early Friday, March 5 by car.

The foursome crossed into West Virginia at Martinsburg, and rumbled on into Maryland, through the Cumberland Gap, on to Morgantown, WV and north to Pittsburgh. From there they commandeered the Pennsylvania and Ohio turnpikes and drove till they disembarked at Bryan, Ohio.

Total miles Anita and Gary drove the cat, to give to someone they had never met: 550 miles.

Kassandra had never met Anita. Neither had ever met Deb, either. Her (Kassandra's) assignment was to take Miss Kitty the next 445 miles of the journey, across Indiana via the turnpike, up through the Chicago Loop, and on to Madison, Wisconsin, where she sought out Ariel - whom Kassandra and Anita had also never met.

Ariel and Kassandra and Miss Kitty together made the final leg of the trip across the Wisconsin prairie to the brick house amid the tattered corn.

Throughout this extraordinary journey, Miss Kitty sat calm and uncaged on a folded up coat in the back seat.

And when they arrived at the brick house, and Miss Kitty was presented, smiles abounded, except on the serene, tiger-striped face of the creature who started out lost in real space and wound up uniting four people who had known each other in virtual space for years but had never actually locked eyes.

The reunion was over all too soon. But a reminder remained of the power of friendship, which could traverse half a continent in the name of a cold, lonely creature's instinct for survival. The cat's, not Deb's.

Miss Kitty's name has since been changed to Whyspory Mooch Montana Keeton Cat. "Whyspory" is an acronym for seven favorite 49er players. "Mooch" is the nickname for 49ers coach Steve Mariucci, formerly with the Green Bay Packers. "Montana" - well if you have to ask, this story's really not for you. "Keeton" evidently is a word that somehow reminds Deb of kitten.

But you don't need to know all this. All you need to hear is the sound the cat makes on her new mistress' lap, as she (Deb) types out her daily messages to friends.

It is the sound all cats make in the calmness of their bliss. It is the sound of friendship at its perfect timbre, of cars speeding by, of wipers slapping away slush in the dark. It is the murmuring hum of the living word fervent.

Mike wrote about Deb Enloe once before, which can be read, along with all Mike's books and essays, at http://www. mfinley.com/articles/cyberfriend.htm