That One Time We Had a Cat
/This one time, we had a cat for 6 weeks. It was October 2018, and we had just moved to our new pet friendly apartment. We found Luna wandering around outside our apartment one evening, super freaked out and cold. Being a sucker for cats, I brought her inside (thinking it would just be for one night).
Luna was obsessed with these little catnip stuffed mice, we’d find them all over the apartment.
Unfortunately it was already past 10pm, so we couldn’t go to the store for food, or take her to a shelter to see if she had a chip. So we gave her some turkey meat and water and she ate without protest.
It took her a few hours to fully calm down. She was understandably stressed and confused, and meowed and meowed while wandering around the apartment. I felt terrible for her, but at the late hour there wasn’t much else we could do, so we went to bed. She finally wedged herself in-between some boxes under our bed and went to sleep.
Sean is actually allegeric to cats, and by morning, it was starting to show. We took Luna to a local shelter to get her chip read and hopefully contact her owner. We found out that she had one, however it wasn’t registered to anyone, which basically means it’s useless.
We got in the car and debated what we should do. Neither of us felt good about leaving her at the shelter, but also, allergies. We decided we’d give it a few days and see how it went (i.e. we’d see how bad Sean’s allergies actually were). Because we were keeping her, the shelter gave us some food for free, and we picked up some kitty litter on the way home.
She wasn’t much of a cuddler, but Sean’s lap was her favorite evening spot.
For the first few days Luna stayed upstairs under the bed. We also just called her Gato because it took over a week for us to decide on a name that we felt fit her personality.
After about a week she’d start venturing down in the evenings. Her favorite spot to land was on Sean’s lap, which was both adorable and ironic considering I am the cat person and he is allergic!
To his credit, despite his runny nose and sneezing, he loved on her and genuinely wanted to keep her. He claimed (although I think it was more like wishful thinking), that his allergies were getting better as time went on. I liked this answer so chose to believe it.
I also took the fact that we had just moved to a pet friendly apartment as a sign that we should keep her. I grew up with lots of animals, but since moving out when I went to college, I hadn’t lived anywhere that allowed pets. It was actually a huge reason we had moved, “get a pet” was on our 2019 list of goals.
Luna just moved up the timeline a bit.
Her second favorite place to hang out, was on my desk, usually on top of the keyboard.
After three weeks or so, she was fully integrated and comfortable around us and the apartment. During the day she’d come hang out with me at my desk, usually on my keyboard as cats do, but it was nice having another living thing around.
Working from home can be very isolating. People always told me to get a dog or cat, but I never realized how nice it could be until Luna arrived.
About a month and a half after we got her, she started having stomach issues, and was throwing up a lot. We decided to take her to the vet just to be sure.
Since it was our first time with her, they decided to scan her chip again for good measure. Turns out, her owner had finally registered her name. The vet came back in the room and said, “Well this is a little bit awkward. We scanned her chip again and she does have an owner. I know she’s been living with you now for a few weeks so I’ll let you decide what to do about it.”
We didn’t even have to talk about it, obviously we wouldn’t keep someone else’s pet, so we called the gal and she said she’d come right away to get her. We waited until she showed up, and were surprised when a young girl with purple hair busted through the door and went straight for the cat. She said nothing to us which we found odd, umm, girl we’ve been taking care of your cat for the past 6 weeks, little thanks maybe? But nothing.
We left feeling sad and bummed. Obviously that wasn’t the outcome we expected out of that visit, but we were happy to see Luna go back home. And realistically it was for the best. Sean’s allergies were killing him (he was downplaying it), and the plan was always to get a dog anyway. Which we did six months later.
But we sure did enjoy the few weeks we had with our blue-eyed beauty!
