Sawyer Prefers Blondes by Amanda Leigh

And here is the last response to our cat adoption prompt from the point of view of the cat!! This one I wrote from the perspective of my adopted kitty, Sawyer. I hope you enjoy!! We love pets!!

 

Sawyer Prefers Blondes

Meowwww….

Sasha mewls next to me, and suddenly all the kittens are clamoring to get a look, climbing over each other. I peek and see that someone is coming through the door. People! Humans! One taller, with black hair on her head and tan skin. And then the little human walks into the room. She’s not a kitten…a child. But she is small. And has yellow hair, and something on her face covering her eyes. They are dark, like they’re blocking out the light. Her smile is bright, and the room lights up. She seems a little bit nervous, but mostly happy and excited. Her and the big human come into the room more. The little one walks a little bit off, more weight on her right leg. Her fingers twist together a few times.

One of the nice humans who takes care of us tells her to take a seat. And I know, I just know it. This one is mine. This is my human. Who I’m supposed to go home with.

“Hey,” I say to my friends in our way. “Don’t be too cute.” 

Meow. “Why?”

“Because! Because I found her, this is my human. I want her, need her to pick me!”

“The bigger one? Or small one with the yellow hair and the things covering her eyes?”

“That one. The small one! I want that one!”

My friends meow in agreement. When one of us knows, we just know, and all of the others are supposed to respect that. We don’t get in the other’s way when one of us knows a human is meant for us, and we’re meant for them.

I’m the first kitten she holds, and I get to see her eyes because she takes those things off of her face. They look blue, but not blue. Blue, but then sort of grey like a few of the kittens in here. They’re kind eyes, I like them.

The woman tells her to hold some more. No, I think. This is my human. She has to pick me.

The yellow haired girl holds only one more before she says she wants to hold me again. Yes! Yes, she wants to hold me again. I’m place into her arms and she smiles again. The biggest one so far. She feels it, too.  She knows she’s supposed to be my human, right?

“This one’s awful cute,” says the bigger human, about a different kitten. No, no, me. She has to choose me.

The girl agrees, but turns her attention back to me. I can feel it. She’s going to pick me, right? Right?

***

Not too long after. I’m in some sort of mini house made of the same thing the square things we like to play in are. And in this I’m seated on my new human’s lap, in a big metal thing that seems to fly. I hear other ones, too, and the noises scare me.

“Shhh. It’s okay. We’re almost home. It’s okay.” The little human’s voice soothes me. Her voice is soft, and calm, and I like listening to her. I don’t like this metal box that moves, but I like listening to the little woman’s voice.

 ***

When we get to my new home, I’m happy, I’m excited, but I’m still scared. It’s a new place. And there’s so much more room!

So many new things. I don’t know what to look at first. I want to run up to all of them, and sniff them, and play with some of them, but I stay in my little house instead. They set it down on the floor. I want to come out, but I’m still scared.

I start to come out more over the next few days, but I keep going back to my house box. (I heard them call it a box. That’s the word for it.) They show me my litter box. (I get my own!) They show me where my food and my water is. I go to that sometimes.  And they have toys for me already.

 ***

A few days into staying at my new home, I start to come out more, and play with my little yellow haired human. Seven times a day, she sits down and swallows many small things. They’re not food, and the bigger human doesn’t do this. They call it her pills, her meds. Sometimes she feels sick after the meds, I can tell. So I start to sit next to her when she does them, and start to crawl in her lap.

One day, my little yellow haired girl (Amanda is her name, but I start to call her mama in my head) is laying down on the couch (I heard the humans call it that) with a book (I learned that one, too. My human has a lot of them). She’s reading and sometimes talking to her mother (the bigger human!). I decide I want to be up there with her, too. So I jump up on the couch and pad over to her feet. She looks over the book at me and smiles. Her eyes go back to the book for a minute. I walk over her legs, up onto her stomach, and duck my head under the book to look at her. She smiles big and laughs. I walk right over her chest, and up onto her collarbone and shoulder, and lay down right there.

She holds her book out to the side, forgotten for the moment. Her mom takes out the little rectangle things the humans have and clicks a button. I don’t know what she did, but my human seems happy. She pets my fur and scratches behind my ears just right, and lets my stay on tip of her. She’s warm and comforting and my mama. That’s when I decide once and for all I made the right choice. This human was meant to be mine. I’m glad I adopted her. She has some issues, I can tell, but we’ll work through them together. 

Pine and Lavender by Jessica VanderWerff

 And our next response to the prompt, "An adoption story from the cat's point of view" comes from Jessica VanderWerff. A lovely ode to the human/pet relationship. We hope you enjoy, and please comment below. 

Bo 

Pine and Lavender by Jessica VanderWerff

Trigger Warnings: pet death

 

            I remember the first time my human held me. He was not like the children who picked me up too quickly. He was an older boy with a scar above his right eye, chapped lips and brown hair. He was gentle and his movements were slow. 

            “That’s our senior resident, you don’t want him. You probably want a younger cat to play with! Do they even allow cats in your college dorm?” The woman asked. 

            The boy stared at me and smiled. “I have an off campus apartment and I want this cat. He looks kind of sad. I think he and I both need a friend.” 

            The woman didn’t argue. In a few minutes I was in the older boy’s car. His apartment smelled of foods I didn’t recognize. He carried me into the kitchen and carefully set my pet carrier on the floor. He opened the door to the carrier and whispered to me:

            “You can come out when you’re ready.” 

            I walked out of my pet carrier right away. I was hungry and I smelled people food and kibble. The older boy chuckled and placed bowls of kibble and water in front of me. The kibble was soft. It didn’t hurt my remaining teeth like the stale stuff at the shelter had. I ate my food quickly. I had to eat quickly when I was at the shelter. Us cats all ate from one trough. If I didn’t eat fast, I wouldn’t have gotten very much, and no one ever shared their food with the slower eaters. It just wasn’t something we did. 

            “What should I call you?” asked the older boy. 

            I looked up at him. I had had a few names over the years because I had lived with a few families. The first family called me Harvey. I lived with them when I was a kitten. I liked that name but I didn’t like their children. They were rough and treated me like a toy. When the family had to move to a home that didn’t allow cats, they returned me to the shelter. The children were sad. I was not. Next, I lived with a family who called me Felix. I have met many cats called Felix so I did not like this name. The family often forgot to feed me so I did not like them. They left me behind when they moved to a new home. Their neighbors brought me back to the shelter. Then I lived with an old man. I did not know his name and he never gave me one. He smelled of sickness and chemicals but he was kind to me and fed me good food. Then one day he went to sleep and did not wake up. His family returned me to the shelter. I was sad for a while. 

            The older boy interrupted my thoughts, “I’ll just ask Lisa when she visits. She’ll know what to call you, she’s good with stuff like that.” 

            I didn’t know who or what a Lisa was, but when she came to the older boy’s home, her hair smelled of lavender, her eyes were kind and when she held me, her hands were gentle. 

            “Oh what a sweet old boy,” she cooed. “I’ll call you Sage.” 

            “Sage?” The older boy scoffed. Every grey cat I’ve ever met is called Sage. That’s so unoriginal.” 

            “How many grey cats have you met exactly? And that’s not why I called him Sage. He’s a little old cat grandpa and his eyes look wise to me. That’s why, Michael!” She smiled as she gave the older boy a quick kiss on the lips. 

            I would never be a grandpa, but she didn’t know that. When I was a kitten the workers at the shelter had done something to all of us kittens so that we would never be fathers and mothers. I was in pain for a few days but then I’d mostly forgotten about it. It didn’t matter now. I liked Michael and his Lisa. I neither liked nor disliked the name Sage but having a name and finally knowing the older boy was called Michael made me feel welcome. 

As the days carried on, Michael went to school and did work every evening. Most of his work was what he called studying, but sometimes Lisa would visit and they would go out together. One day they went out together and came home smelling of winter and the forest. They dragged a tree into the older boy’s apartment and decorated it. I stood at its base and looked up, feeling my eyes widen. I couldn’t help it, I had to. Despite my aging, aching bones, I began to climb. A few of the decorated orbs the humans put on the tree fell, but still, I kept climbing till I was mid-tree. I settled in one of the branches, inhaled the scent of pine and began to purr. I heard Lisa’s distinctive laugh that sounded like a pony neighing. (I’m a cat, we know what other animals sound like.) 

            “Look at Sage! He’s so cute, let’s take a picture with him.” Lisa sat below the tree, and my human, my Michael, sat next to her. He took out what he called a phone and took a picture. Afterwards, I climbed down from the tree and sat in my human’s lap. Michael hugged me and so did Lisa. I wished that they could hold me that way forever: the three of us, enveloped in the scents of pine and lavender. 

In the days that followed, the humans exchanged gifts. They even bought me something of my very own: a set of three toy mice filled with cat nip. I wasn’t very interested in the gifts. I was simply too old to play very much and my joints hurt, but I faked moderate interest because I knew it would make them happy, and I was grateful that they remembered me during their celebrations. Those were the best of days. 

One morning, Michael and Lisa began to take down the decorations. I grew angry and sad and bit Lisa’s hand when she tried to pet me right after she took the pretty star off the top of the tree. I did not mean to bite her. I was just upset because they were changing things that I’d grown to like. She was not angry with me. She sat down next to me and gently scratched my head. I looked up at her, trying to find some way to make her understand I was sorry for biting her, but the room began to spin. It was hard to breathe and there was a sharp pain in my chest. 

            “Something is wrong with Sage,” Lisa screamed. I heard her, but it was as if she was far away. Her voice sounded echoey and distorted. I felt myself fall over onto my side. 

            “Oh God, this is all my fault,” Michael yelled.  

            No, I thought. I wish I could tell my human no, that this was not his fault. This was not simply because he took down my tree. I am old. Not young-old like the older boy. No, not like him. Not a college freshman who thinks he is a man but is still very much a child. Us cats do not age as humans do. There is much we do not understand about your world and you understand even less of ours. When we age it does not always happen gradually like a human. Humans age like a whisper in a pine scented forest, cats age much more quickly and our time here is much shorter than yours but no less meaningful. 

I must have fallen asleep for a while because when I woke there were humans in white coats consoling my humans. 

            “His heart is weak, he’s old, there’s nothing we can do.” 

            My human, my Michael asked if he and Lisa could be alone with me. The other humans left the room. My Michael held me, gently as always. I looked into his eyes and tried to do what the humans call smiling. I wanted him to be sure that this was not his fault, that he had given me the best days I had ever known. I slow blinked at him, then he did it back. Lisa’s eyes were closed as she held me and my human. I inhaled their scents one last time: pine and lavender.