Some names shimmer in the light, demanding attention with their brightness. Others arrive through the dark, soft-footed and inevitable, carrying secrets only they understand.

In September 2025, a black kitten wandered into our lives. But if I am being completely honest, she had already arrived long before her tiny paws ever touched the pavement in that industrial parking lot.

That morning had begun like any other, until a vision flickered through my mind – a small black kitten with eyes like polished mirrors and fur the colour of a moonless sky. I could feel her presence settling into my awareness, not in some mystical fantasy way, but with the quiet, unshakeable certainty that something fundamental had already shifted in the invisible world around me. The vision remained with me throughout the day, creating a persistent sensation that something unseen was steadily walking toward our lives.

When evening came, Zac was leaving his workplace parking lot in the industrial part of the city – hardly the kind of place where you would expect omens or miracles to unfold. As he walked to his car, he waved goodbye to his co-workers who were still gathered near the building. That’s when he noticed one of them holding something small and dark against their chest.

It was a tiny black cat, and they had just found it wandering alone with no identification, no collar, no clues about where it had come from. They were standing there uncertainly, unsure what they should do with this unexpected discovery.

“Let me have a look,” Zac said, walking over to them.

The moment he got close enough to see the kitten clearly, he pulled out his phone and called me. We were having what started as an ordinary conversation when I heard it – a single, precise meow echoing through the phone line.

This was not some random sound in the background. The meow was deliberate, perfectly timed, as if it had been orchestrated to travel through the phone and land directly in the space of knowing I had been carrying all day.

“I have been waiting for her,” I said without hesitation, the words spilling out before my rational mind could catch up.

I could feel the truth of it settling in my bones even though I couldn’t see what was happening on his end of the line.

When Zac reached out to hold her, she settled into his arms immediately – impossibly tiny, coal-black from nose to tail, and utterly unafraid. She looked up at him as though she had always known exactly where she was going, as though this moment had been written in some cosmic script long before either of us was born.

When we took her to the veterinarian the next day, we learned she was only nine weeks old. She was still very much a baby in terms of her physical development, but she carried an energy that felt ancient, timeless, far older than her brief days on earth. She was neither skittish like most feral cats nor performatively affectionate like those desperate for attention. Instead, she was profoundly still, deeply observant, and completely present in each moment. From the instant she looked up at us with those mirror-dark eyes, it became crystal clear that she had chosen us – not the other way around.

We named her Hades.

I know it might seem like an odd choice for a cat, especially one so small and impossibly soft. But the name fit her like a perfectly tailored coat. We did not choose it because she was fearsome or dark in temperament, but because she had arrived from the realm of the invisible, because her very presence felt like prophecy made manifest.

What the Name Hades Truly Holds

In Greek mythology, Hades is widely known as the god of the underworld, but this common understanding barely scratches the surface of what the name actually represents. More than anything else, Hades is the unseen one, the keeper of mysteries that exist beyond the reach of ordinary perception. The name itself comes from the ancient Greek Aïdēs, which literally means “not seen.” It speaks of mystery, of things veiled from common sight, of depths that can only be felt rather than observed.

Hades is not death itself, though many people make this mistake. He is the guardian of what comes after, the keeper of all that has been lost, buried, forgotten, or transformed into something entirely new. He rules over the realm where all things eventually return to be renewed.

This little kitten, who had emerged from shadow and silence like a character from an ancient story, seemed to embody every aspect of these deeper meanings. She was never loud or demanding. She did not perform for attention or beg for treats. Instead, she arrived with a dignity that seemed almost regal, moving through our home as if she had been observing us for years before finally deciding to step into our visible world.

Like the god whose name she carries, she reminded us daily that the most profound power is rarely loud or showy. Some presences carry a gravitational pull that comes not from dramatic display, but from an unshakeable depth of being.

The Unexpected Messenger

In ancient Greece, people rarely spoke the name Hades aloud, believing it was too powerful and sacred for casual conversation. Instead, they referred to him by the title Plouton, which means “the Wealth-Bringer.” This was not mere superstition, but recognition of a profound truth: from beneath the earth comes all real treasure – precious metals and gemstones, yes, but also the deeper riches of memory, meaning, and transformation.

Hades the kitten brought exactly this kind of wealth into our home. She introduced a different rhythm to our daily lives, a deeper quality of listening and attention. Her presence became the soft grounding of something sacred and invisible now made beautifully tangible.

Within days, she had established herself as a kind of gatekeeper in our space. She would spend hours simply watching and waiting, her dark eyes tracking movements and energies that we could not see. She had an uncanny ability to vanish completely, only to reappear in places that felt deeply symbolic—perched beside books of mythology, tucked into shadowy corners where candles flickered, resting near doorways as if she were conducting some kind of unseen ritual work.

She was never just a kitten in the ordinary sense. She had become a living threshold between the visible and invisible worlds.

Names as Sacred Doorways

We have never taken naming lightly in our household. Names are not mere decorations or cute labels—they are doorways into relationship, keys that unlock deeper understanding. To name something is to enter into a covenant with it, to acknowledge its essence and invite it to reveal its true nature to you.

When we chose to name her Hades, we were not trying to invoke darkness or doom. We were honoring the profound presence she carried, recognizing and celebrating the immense value of what lives and moves beneath the surface of ordinary perception.

We were saying yes to the realm of the invisible and all its gifts. We were saying yes to the things that arrive through intuition and vision rather than logical planning. We were saying yes to the soft black kitten who, for reasons we may spend years trying to fully understand, chose that specific night, that particular street corner, and our particular lives to finally step from shadow into light.

The Ancient Wisdom of Perfect Timing

Some arrivals in our lives resist immediate explanation. They do not announce themselves with fanfare or provide detailed justifications for their timing. They simply appear when they appear, and their presence becomes its own form of proof that something larger than coincidence is always at work in the world.

When Hades came to us that October night, she did not merely walk into our physical home. She walked directly into a space of readiness that had been quietly forming within us, a place in our hearts and souls that had already begun listening for her long before her first meow ever echoed through that phone line.

In choosing to name her after the ancient god of the unseen realm, we remembered something that our ancestors knew but modern life often teaches us to forget: what cannot be seen is not automatically less important than what can be observed with our physical eyes. What descends from mystery is not lost or diminished, but arriving exactly when it needs to arrive. And sometimes, what meows softly in the darkness of a city night is indeed carrying the presence of something divine.