Cats are assholes, and I’ll never change my mind about that. They use their piercing eyes to see into your mind, purely to calculate ways to irritate you at the worst moment.
While I have always felt this way, my boyfriend comes from a cat family, through and through.
To give you a better idea of what I mean: While on a holiday hometown visit one year, his parents did a show-and-tell of their cremated cat closet. I think there were 10 boxes of ashes, but I lost count after the first few.
This is when I realized that there is no limit to how much people love their feline friends. And I understood how vital cat ownership was for the well-being of my boyfriend, who had been without a pet for the first time since we had moved in together the previous year. (He had always had his own or at least a roommate’s cat around.)
Understanding his family’s multigenerational love of cats, combined with knowing a pet would help with my boyfriend’s depression, I finally agreed to get a cat last year.Along with me moving to the suburbs and getting a car, cat ownership would confirm that hell had indeed frozen over.
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“The cat has to like me too, okay,” I said to my boyfriend repeatedly in the days leading up to a trip to the Peninsula Humane Society and SPCA, psyching myself up for this life change.
I didn’t know if I was ready for claws and cat poop. But we were going to see kitties! I’d be a monster if I didn’t at least like looking at baby animals. We tried hanging out with a couple of different kittens, all of whom my boyfriend wanted (of course). I wasn’t vibing with them, though.
Then we went to a room full of three-month-old black kitties. A couple of my friends have cool black cats, and I had actually grown to like their social natures and Halloween auras. So I sat on the floor, and some kittens started to climb on me. One initially got my attention by walking on my arm, but another silently made his way into my lap and settled there. “That’s the one,” declared my boyfriend of this scraggly kitty with blue eyes and oversized ears. On the elevator ride down, with the tiny kitten in tow, we both decided to call him Frank Sinatra. “Frankie” would suit his young personality well.
Frankie was still recovering from an upper respiratory infection and couldn’t even meow when we brought him home. We kept our bedroom door open the first week, and Frankie nestled in my hair each night. I barely slept out of fear of accidentally crushing him. But he was never scared of his new home, nor did he mark his territory with infamously stinky cat pee.
“He’s going to be a good cat, I can tell,” said my boyfriend after a couple of days. He was right. I’ve never seen a hairball, and Frankie has rarely thrown up. His easy temperament allows us to pick him up and kiss him almost whenever we want. A perfect cat for a cat-hater like me.
Now, one year and 500-plus cat photos later, both Frankie and I have changed. He meows outside of the bedroom door every morning like a rooster. First he’ll want to cuddle, then play catch or fetch with his favorite mouse toy. Frankie creates parkour routines for himself around the apartment and loves playing with each person he meets. I’ve learned that animals have their own personalities, and I can read his moods before interacting with him. I have to pause and calm my energy if I want kitty cuddles.
I had never picked up a cat before I had Frankie, and in doing so, I am getting over my fear of getting scratched. I’m still practicing how to cradle him like a baby in my arms — well on my way to becoming a proper cat lady. I’m not going to lie, though: I’m still scared of Frankie. I scream either in surprise or pain because of him once daily. I can’t yet bring myself to cut his nails or clean his eye gunk. I shove off those duties to my boyfriend — though I’ve somehow become the main pooper scooper and don’t mind Frankie licking my face with his cat breath.
The emotional benefits of having Frankie have only become magnified during the pandemic. He snuggles with us when he senses we are sad, especially since my boyfriend’s depression has become more intense during this time. When it feels like there’s no end to our pandemic unemployment, Frankie’s presence has been an emotional anchor.He gives us reason to wake up in the morning (we don’t have a choice with his rooster-like tendencies), and having to take care of him forces us to keep our apartment and ourselves in order — some days are more successful than others.
Nationally, there’s been a rush of pandemic pet adoptions due to more people being home and wanting to stave off loneliness. Buffy Martin Tarbox, communications manager for the Peninsula Humane Society and SPCA, said the shelter has moved to an adoption-by-appointment setup to comply with social distancing regulations. As a result of the new adoption policy, people are spending more time thinking about adoption logistics as well as time on the phone with staff for information on what to expect. Because of this advanced planning, “there aren’t as many impulse adoptions… return rates are lower,” said Tarbox.
She also said it’s still kitten season, and the shelter will “still experience litters coming in as late as December and January.” Some shelters give adoption discounts during kitten season, such as the East Bay SPCA with its Catopurrfest through November 1. And for pet owners financially struggling during Covid-19, the Peninsula SPCA and other Bay Area pet shelters run pet food banks with no questions asked.
I can say now that I love my sweet cat, even with his cathole tendencies. He likes knocking over water glasses and has destroyed all of our plants. He carved out a door for himself in our Venetian blinds and loves to leap through the horizontal slats haphazardly at the sound of a bird or lawn mower. One day, we’ll have to use our security deposit to fix the blinds. But I know this littleparlor pantheris worth it.
