This is how I thought love should always be like.

Is this perfection or am I wrong?

It was 2002 and I was just getting over a very bad heartbreak. I had moved out of my now ex’s apartment and was living in a small studio in the Silverlake area of Los Angeles. To punctuate my break up, I decided to get a cat. My ex was allergic to cats and we couldn’t own one together. So now that he was out of the picture, enter kitty cat!

I had decided I wanted a white cat. Why white? Because the majority of the furniture I owned at the time was white. If that cat was going to shed all over the place, it might as well blend into the background.

So off I went, from shelter to shelter, looking for the perfect white cat. If you’ve never picked up an animal from the shelter, you have never seen such sad animal eyes. All disillusioned and wary behind bars. After 2 weeks, I popped into a particular adoption center where the cats roam free instead of being caged. It was called Angel Puss Rescue. (Apparently the woman who ran it got sued for having sick animals congregate in a small area. Personally, I thought it was brilliant. It was a lovely environment to meet animals.)

As I opened the door, all these cats came running and meowing at me. One particularly loud one was a black female cat which I promptly shooed away. My eyes wandered over the selection. Ooooh, a pretty Siamese! It ran away. Oooh, a white cat with orange spots! Ran away. White cat with one blue eye and one orange eye. Ran away. I kept trying to catch these white cats and see if they would settle into my lap. Meanwhile, that annoying black cat kept following me, and meowing.

Exhausted, I plopped down intp one of the overly fluffy recliners. I was never going to find the perfect cat! Black cat came meowing, jumped up the arm of the recliner, and settled into my lap. She licked her paws and started purring. I put her down on the ground. “NO,” I said firmly. Unperturbed, she hopped onto a nearby cat tree and waited. I tried to wrangle another cat in my lap. Pointless. Black cat watched, then when my lap was empty again, she hopped down from her tree, stood in my lap and stared me in the eye. Then without warning (as much cats are wont to do), she hopped onto my right shoulder, climbed to the left one, and draped herself like a fur stole around my head. She purred in a superior way, and I was obviously the servant.

The lady looked at me and said, “So you want that cat?” And with the soon-to-be ‘Maow Maow’ perched on my shoulders, I sighed and said, “I guess I’ve been adopted.”

Shouldn’t love be that easy? I was bewitched by persistence.

Best decision of my life.

No, I was wrong. This is perfection!

Happy Halloween everyone!