There’s More Than One Way to Adopt a Cat

Gianmarco Soresi — There’s More Than One Way to Adopt a Cat

So the way I tell this story really depends on one quick thing. Could I get a round of applause if you’re more of a cat person? Okay, all right, could I get a round of applause if you’re more of a dog person? If you’re more of a bird person, sorry, no vote tonight, but great. So I feel kind of safe to say I hate cats.

I hate them. And it’s not their fault. It’s not their fault per se. It’s just that my first memory, and I’ve done a lot of therapy, but my first memory in this world is when I was three years old, and my mom and I were moving into her new boyfriend’s house, and he had a cat named Smokey. And I went to pet Smokey, and as cats are apt to do when you show affection, Smokey scratched my face. eyes, nose, mouth, there’s blood. It was so bad. So that’s the backstory. My first memory in this world is my soon-to-be stepfather’s cat wounding me, which obviously carried a lot of metaphorical weight as well. And I thought that my girlfriend knew this. I thought we were on the same page about this, that I wasn’t really into having cats until one day we were coming home from our weekly pay-what-you-can yoga class.

Or as I call it, our weekly free yoga class. And we’re walking home to my apartment and we turn a corner when there was a man there, crumpled gray suit, holding a cardboard box. And in the cardboard box were five kittens. And entirely unprompted, he launches into a monologue basically. He says that he’s a funeral director. And he was leaving a service that morning, he heard some meows by the steps. Saw the box, no note or anything. And he thought they were adorable, but his wife was very allergic, so he simply, he could not keep them. And I could see where this was going. So I said to my girlfriend, let’s go, we need to go home, I have a business meeting. And she said, you know, can I pet them?

And I said, okay, fine. So she starts petting them, then she starts holding them, then she starts naming them, and I’m like, all right, we gotta go. So we turn to leave, and that’s when this guy says, to no one in particular, though very clearly to us, well, if no one adopts him by the end of the day, I’m gonna have to drown him in my pool. You know, because those are your only two options in that situation. And without saying a word, my girlfriend turns, grabs the box, and just gallops off into the sunset. Not even in the right direction, just like a mother lioness with her cubs. And when I found her somewhere in the heights, she swore to me, she swore to me that she would have them in a shelter by the end of the week. Long story short, I had to drown them. No, relax, it’s a joke.

It’s a joke, it’s okay. Long story short, I’m living in a litter box on the Upper West Side. And I want you to know that I tried. I tried really, because I love this woman. I love the impulse that she had to take these, I think it’s the same impulse that made her like me, because… In many ways, I think maybe one of the reasons I don’t like cats is maybe I’m a cat in the sense that I am also an asshole. But I was doing okay because there was this one cat that I really liked that she had named Baby. Which again, a lot of metaphorical weight with these cats. And the reason that she named Baby Baby was because He or she, I didn’t check, but baby was the runt of the litter, which meant that baby didn’t really move very much.

And I find out that’s the one state that I can enjoy a cat in, is when they’re borderline comatose. And I used to put, I loved baby, I would lie down, I’d put baby on my stomach, I would just pet baby for hours, and it was just like, I really enjoyed baby. But of course, baby, as babies do, grew older and started moving and running around. And one day, I went to pick up baby, and baby scratched me. Right on my face, eyes, nose, mouth, there’s blood. And so I said to my girlfriend, I said, look, baby, I love you, but it is either me or those five cats. And I really miss her. And sometimes, I miss those goddamn cats.