The Hunt and Another Tale

The Hunt

We were twitching like felines ready to pounce; my fiancé and I were just waiting for the perfect time to spring into action as we stalked wide-eyed through the territory we had sniffed out. When finally the rat showed a sign of hesitation, we jumped. Claws extended, we grasped the opportunity to sink our teeth into the pulsating neck of our prey. There in the finished attic of a Colonial revival surrounded by fresh paint and new carpet, we became accomplished hunters: We had made an offer on the house.

The fresh taste of blood is still on my whiskers as I sit in this tiny one-bedroom apartment waiting for our closing date in late April, staring out the balcony eleven stories up, thinking to myself, "I won't miss this place."

We've been here too long, years. Throwing away rent month after month and for what? Beige carpeting and white walls; linoleum; concrete. As if it wasn't already undesirable enough, it's not even ours. It's a temporary month-to-month roof over our head that comes with loud neighbors, heavy traffic and uniformity. I look out my window and I see another building shaped just like this one, with windows that look just like mine, tiny balconies with green patches of lichen just like mine, knowing that people who are nothing like me or each other are living in the same apartment cut from the same cheap mold. I not only feel tiny, but I feel uninspired.

We had thirty odd houses in mind, and it only took walking through two to find the perfect one. I had that same feeling in my heart that I had when I met my fiancé for the first time. It's that feeling that everything is right and you don't need to look further. It's the feeling of seeing the Universe smile on you.

The New Member of the Family

Molly was just a stray taken to the shelter in the middle of a cold, unforgiving winter along Lake Erie. Her brown patches of tabby-patterned hair are uneven on her neck, and broken up on her back by stubborn patches of white, giving her an appearance of an atlas from the back: Dark earth surrounded by a frozen white ocean. I didn't even know Molly existed, and I didn't quite care.

Who I cared about was the black cat with the white whiskers.

Jon-Michael and I were walking through the now-closed Pet Supermarket to purchase rat food for Norman and Robert, my aging rodents. The Pet Supermarket, along with some other pet stores, works with a local animal shelter to provide space for adoptable pets when that shelter, in this case, the Animal Protective League, runs out of space. It wasn't unnatural, then, that I would meet a cat sitting in a small cage, pathetic eyes watching everyone walk by, and instantly fall in love. But we left only with two bags of rat food, a thought in my mind, and a soft spot in my heart.

That night, as I pieced together a bookshelf from a box, I got the crazy notion that we needed a cat. Not just any cat, but that cat. He was sweet and beautiful and old, and it wasn't fair that he was sitting in a cage barely big enough for him to turn in a full circle. It didn't take long for my glassy doe eyes to convince Jon-Michael that bringing him home was the right thing to do.

The next day, we went back to the Pet Supermarket, and I rushed over to the small tower of three cages. He wasn't there. I started to cry. I didn't just want to give a cat a home; I wanted to give that cat a home. They weren't all tears of sorrow, because his departure meant that another family was giving him the love I would have.

In his cage instead was Molly, though her label at the time said "Hiley." She wasn't particularly interested in me, but I couldn't turn away from her hazel eyes that were rimmed in black. I came looking to adopt a pet and give an adult cat a new and better life. If it wasn't going to be the black tom, why not her?

Molly Murderface has been ignoring us from her various sleeping spots around the apartment ever since, and I couldn't be happier.