Page 21 of Every Inch of You
“I can’t have another pet. I already asked my landlady. Do you wantit?”
“No…I mean…I don’t think it wants me…I don’t know. What’ll we do withit?”
“Well, we take it to a vet. Mine’s closed on Sundays, so we take it to an emergency animal hospital to make sure it doesn’t have a microchip, and have them check it out, tell us how old it is, if it seems healthy, stuff like that. They might have formula there, otherwise we go to a pet store and buy some. Oh and you’ll need a litterbox.”
“Okay. I don’t know if I can keep it—this is happening toofast.”
“Okay, you don’t have to decide thissecond.”
“Are you busy—do you have time forthis?”
“Yeah. I can come now. Text me youraddress.”
I looked over at Justin Timberlake, who was busy licking his butt. “Did you ask the cat gods for a miracle, you littlegenius?”
I entered Brad’s home address into my Waze app. It was a five-minute drive from my house. Five minutes! He was one neighborhood away from me. How is it possible that we lived five minutes away from each other and I’d never seen him in the two years that I’d lived inPortland?
He was standingoutside the entrance to the garage. He looked nervous and unshowered. He was so freaking cute. I parked and brought over my cat carrier and a towel and a pair of rubber gloves. He looked so relieved to see me. “Hey,” he said. “Good. I didn’t want anyone to drive in or out of the garage and scare it. Comeon.”
“Okay. Calm down. It’ll beokay.”
“I know it’ll be okay,” he snapped. He immediately apologized. “It’s so tiny and scared and it stresses me out. It’s sodumb.”
I rubbed his back and practically had to pull my hand away with my other hand, to stop myself from feeling up his rhomboid major. He led me towards the back corner of the garage, but I could hear the poor little thing screaming. “Ooooh, hey buddy,” I cooed. It went silent for a few seconds, then started meowing again. “He’s hungry.” I put the carrier on the ground where the cat couldn’t see it, opened the carrier, and put on thegloves.
“Gloves. Why didn’t I think of that? What do you want me todo?”
“Hold this towel so I can wrap the kitten up in it after I pick it up.” I handed him thetowel.
“What about thecarrier?”
“We’ll wrap it up first, then put it in the carrier. Don’t move the carrier, okay, it’ll scare it. No sudden movements ornoises.”
“Okay.”
I took a breath and started to tiptoe towards the tiny angry frightenedanimal.
“Hey.” I felt his hand on my arm andjumped.
“Sorry!” He waswhispering.
“What?”
“I didn’t thank you. Forcoming.”
I nodded. “Shhh.”
He crouched down and held up the towel, like a liontamer.
I stifled my laugh and stepped slowly towards the nervous creature, cooing and trying to appear as calm and loving and trustworthy as possible, to both ofthem.
Gettingthe little black feral kitten into the carrier wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be—surreptitiously trying to encourage Brad to adopt it was no picnic. He kept grumbling about how this thing (a girl, it turned out) just showed up out of the blue and he couldn’t just change his life to accommodate it. He had grown up with dogs, as had I. The vet had said that the kitten was around four weeks old. She was old enough to begin transitioning to wet kitten food, but should be fed formula for a few days first. Brad muttered that he didn’t have time to bottle feed a kitten five or six times a day. As soon as the vet told him he could take it to the humane society, but that black cats were adopted at much lower rates than other cats, Brad said he’d take her “fornow.”
It was such a sweet little thing. I absolutely would have taken her if I could have. I directed Brad to my favorite pet supply store and helped him pick out everything they’d need, and then some. He kept picking out toys for her, and treats. I explained that she was too young for treats. He selected the most expensive little cat bed, despite grumbling that he really wasn’t prepared for this sort ofthing.
As he drove back to his place, I said: “You’ll have to name her. Any ideas yet?”Do not say BritneySpears.
“Britney Spears comes to mind.” He glanced over at me, smirking. “But I think I’ll wait and see what kind of a personality she has before brandingher.”
