I think we all have at least one lesson life will repeatedly teach us and yet, we will never fully comprehend. For me, that lesson is that I can’t out-plan reality, no matter how hard I try. Or, to put a more positive spin on it, most of my best memories have come from completely unexpected moments.
Long story short on my most recent unexpected moment: I currently have seven cats living in my house.
I’ve never been a cat person. Growing up my family had a cat. His name was Mittens, and he was a demon. He hated people, would entice you to pet him with purring and then scratch the shit out of you, and spent most of his time lurking in the dark corners of our basement waiting to pounce.
Conversely, we also had a corgi named Jesse who was the sweetest animal on earth. She was obsessed with food and therefore shaped like a hefty corndog, but loved to follow you around, snuggle up, or play with her tug-rope toys. So, I decided dogs were my preferred pet.
Twenty years after my time with Mittens, Bobby and I found a kitten squealing pitifully outside of our window one morning. I say squealing, because the noises this kitten makes aren’t quite meows. Bobby refers to them as “‘eows” instead, and this kitten was certainly making a racket, trapped in an egress from our basement window and wet from the recent rainstorm.
Preparing for the worst, I layered up with several sweatshirts and as Bobby eased the window open I reached out my arms to grab the kitten, fully prepared to be met with the full force of her claws and teeth. Instead, she allowed herself to picked up without a fuss and started to purr as soon as she came into my arms.
So that’s how I became a cat mom of one. We named her Alley Cat.
Alley Cat is completely black and built like a panther. Seriously, even though she weighs like twelve pounds, she can be truly terrifying. But as she’s grown up she’s also become quite the chonk. When she runs, her stubby little legs pound the floor so hard we call it her “thomp thomps” (during the pandemic we got really into animating the lives of our pets, ok, so just go with it).
After Rowdy died we noticed a change in Alley Cat. Even though Rowdy barely tolerated her presence, he was her best friend. She loved getting into his bed while he napped and making biscuits beside him, and when he was up and moving around she would often attempt John Cena-style wrestling moves to try and take him to the ground, all of which were hilarious but unsuccessful. Without him, she seemed listless. Cats, in general, spend lots of time asleep, and Alley was no different. But when she was awake she seemed desperate for ways to get her energy out, and our attempts to play with her didn’t quite cut it.
So after an extensive amount of research (because, I am me) we learned that cats, especially kittens, are happier in homes with other pets, specifically other cats. We also learned that in the DC animal shelters, adopting a kitten is an extremely competitive process. I think perhaps bribes of some kind might have worked, or threatening to bust some kneecaps, but after three failed attempts to adopt we decided to take a break. I have a tendency to get overly excited about and attached to things too quickly, so hearing that an adorable kitten I was sure Alley Cat would love was being adopted by someone else was too sad to keep doing. So we put the exploration for a cat friend for Alley on pause and moved on with our lives.
People have told me that you don’t seek out a cat for a pet. When you’re ready, the cat finds you.
And I should have listened more closely, because two weeks after we gave up trying to adopt a second cat a friend of mine texted me:
I have acquired a kitten for you.
Yes, that is literally what the text said. I’d been complaining about my kitten troubles and (because I have really stellar, bad ass people in my life) on of my friends saw a stray kitten in her neighborhood, lured it into her yard with food, got it into her own cat carrier, and brought her to us. Just like that, we had a friend for Alley Cat.
Originally we named the new kitten Cali because of her calico coloring and the fact that it sounds cute with Alley, but very quickly we realized this cat did not have a demeanor fitting of a Cali. She was not sweet, curious and playful like Alley. She was a hardened street cat, an independent kitty who don’t need no owner.
She was also, we later learned, very pregnant.
When we first the new cat she was very skinny and very dirty, but after a few meals her belly started to swell in a way that was clearly not just from finally being full. A trip to the vet confirmed: we were about to go from owning one cat to owning seven: Alley, this new cat, and her five baby cats.
We eventually renamed the new cat Donna, partly because I was watching Suits at the time and partly because it felt like a motherly name, and decided we would keep her and give her a space to have her kittens, even though Donna is a fully feral beast who honestly probably would have preferred giving birth in a nice dumpster somewhere.
Giving birth is actually a fairly straightforward process for cats, or at least for the human participant. According to additional extensive research, all I needed to do was provide Donna with a clean and quiet room, plus a comfy enclosed space for the kittens, typically referred to as a birthing box. Donna took a special liking to one of the fuzzy bathmats in our bathroom, so that became the base for her birthing box, along with some old towels and sheets that I draped over a chair like she was camping. I thought I had done a decent job. It seemed deeply unsatisfactory to Donna.
A few days before Donna was due, Bobby abandoned me for a business trip so I was left on my own to shepherd new kittens into the world. The night before the birth, Donna yowled non-stop. All night I went back and forth between her room and mine, because the only times she would calm down where when I was sitting just outside of her little make-shift tent with her. Weirdly, it seemed she was beginning to like me.
The few hours before she gave birth were the only ones in which Donna showed any affection to me. She would rub up against my legs or get into my lap, yowling and giving me this “what the fuck” look, as if I needed to explain what was going on here. I don’t think I was able to reassure her, but at one point while I was sitting on the floor beside her she put her paws up on my chest, brought her face close to mine, and licked my cheek twice.
Ten minutes later the first kitten came out.
I’ve never been super into birth – I assume very few people really are, even though we are always talking about the miracle of it and whatnot. It’s painful, it’s messy, and it produces something that is very fragile and very important not to break. None of these things are appealing to me. But I will say, being there for this kitten birth was really fucking cool.
First off, Donna was real boss. After the first kitten came out she seemed to figure out what was going on and some type of primal instinct kicked in, transforming her from yowling and chaotic to calm and even loving. As each kitten was born she licked them clean like an expert and devoured the placenta which was horrifying but also appreciated, because I did not want to have to clean that up. Then she would purr and keep her kittens close as they started to latch on for their first meal. I literally did nothing but watch and give the kittens names, but by the time the fifth and final kitten was asleep beside her I was feeling both exhausted and accomplished. We had really done this together, it felt.
Now, the kittens have opened their eyes and are starting to become less like tiny potatoes and more like actual pets, and Donna has gone back to her policy of eyeing me with cool disregard. But, those little potatoes are darn adorable, and it’s been surprisingly a way more fun than stressful experience.
To be clear, I am not keeping seven cats forever. We are getting the kittens healthy and grown up a bit so they can be adopted into great homes (or given away to my friends so I can always come visit them, whichever). But it’s honestly been a great part of my day getting to take a little kitten cuddle break anytime I want, and that’s worth the weird looks I get when I tell people the story of how I took in a stray cat and let her have five babies in my new house. They think I’m crazy. I think I’m efficient.
A lot of my life has been punctuated by events I never would have anticipated for myself that turn out feeling exactly right for me. As a type A control freak, this may never stop being shocking to me. But I think it’s a good thing, that despite my desire to organize and run every aspect of my life, life events remind me to stay open to the new and surprising. It’s my constant reminder that life happens when you’re busy making other plans.