adopting

What does anxiety go with? Animal print?

Obviously it goes with your cat dying, your parent being diagnosed with a terrible illness, and getting a new boss.

…but it also goes with a whole week off work! A great birthday party! A new baby!

My dad had a multiples-of-five birthday, and two of my siblings came to town.

This was great, and this was stressful.
There are yells of delight, huge hugs, silly photos, jokes rated NC-17 that only siblings can tell each other, onion volcanoes set afire, and living room dance parties.

There will be side talks with crushing drops of information to be processed in the weeks to come.

Generally.

At any family gathering.

After I had hugged my nieces repeatedly, danced with a Raggedy Anne doll until her pants came off (accidentally, I assure you), and sung the ritual song and ate the ritual dessert, I had an anxiety hangover.

I think I save my anxiety somewhere, perhaps my spleen, and then when my body gets the signal, it hisses out anxiety into the system.

I responded to this in two ways: going to get a new cat (a highly anxiety-provoking action) and cleaning (good stuff). I cleaned my oven. I cleaned my dishwasher. I know.

I set out to get this new cat on a Monday. It is spring break, so I have all week to closely supervise the new cat induction.

I wore a cool flannel and spikey shoes, leaning into my gen-xness, and happily drove to the fancy animal shelter.

I was early.

You know how alarming that is for me.

It doesn’t happen.

When I approached the door, a young woman came up to open it.

“We don’t open until noon,” she said. “But you can hang out in the lobby and get a cup of coffee.” This place is so nice they have their own coffeehouse.

“Great, thanks,” I said. I have been obsessively googling various cats (sorry I missed you, Yang) and various shelters in surrounding cities for weeks. Yet I had missed something.

I got a latte and sat and read Barbra Streisand’s autobiography. I’m about 800 pages in, and damnit, it’s true, she’s everything except an appreciator of the sexiness of Mandy Patinkin.

A man came in with a dog. The dog was, as he noted, a very good boy. The dog sat by the man, and someone brought the man a tablet.

“It’s too bad, really, because he’s a very good boy [deliberate emphasis] when he takes his medicine, but when it wears off….” The shelter lady also looked regretful. She left to do something, and the man struggled with the tablet. “I don’t know how to answer these questions.”
An animal shelter is like a hospital, a casino, a car repair place, the pharmacy, and, to a lesser extent, the grocery store: big stuff is going down. It can be hard.

A woman came in with a dog, and I tried hard to focus on my book rather than hearing if she was “surrendering” a dog.

I don’t mean to be judgmental, but in my family, we live for years with peed-on carpets, dogs who bite visitors with penises, cats who require injections every 12 hours.

We haven’t been as broke as many people are.

And sometimes I asked a patron of pets to help me with a vet bill. It’s happened.

Anyway, I was at this big, sparkling, bright, cheerful place to GET MY BOY.

My name was called.

The shelter has rooms where three or four cats chill together, and kennel rooms where six cats live more privately. Cats in the chill rooms have access to a catio. There’s natural light. Kansas City, Missouri went from a dungeon of an animal shelter to this place that’s frankly nicer than my first apartment in many ways.

It’s great!

I was there to meet DQ Twist Cone. This cat had been brought to the shelter on my dad’s birthday, and DQ is my dad’s favorite restaurant. He’s a cheap date.

This was my boy! He was desperate to meet me, too, coming up and rubbing on me. But the lady said, “Well, he’s had issues with other cats.”

Oh.

“And he just came back. A lady adopted him, and then brought him back because she said her landlord didn’t allow cats.”

The humanity!

I could not take a chance with DQ Twist Cone. If he didn’t get along with my (admittedly easy) current cat, I could not break him by bringing him back AGAIN. Instead, I would likely ruin my own life.

“We have most of our more social cats at the cat cafe and at the pet stores,” the lady told me. “Maybe you should check there.”

I was going to leave the shelter without a cat.

Now, every other time I have adopted a cat (twice), I went to the pet store, saw the cats available from the humane society, and chose a cat, and took the cat home.

First, my darling, my soul mate, Miranda. I knew I wanted a black cat, she hissed and growled like a demon from hell, and I was like, yes.

Later, my boy T, who just died recently. I knew I needed an uber chill cat to get along with Miranda. Tyb was sitting in his cage with professional Zen, guru Gandhi energy. My boy.

Now I was being all picky. Choosing pets has gotten smarter, with pet rescue groups working to ensure a better fit.

Goodbye DQ Twist Cone. You will find a home.

I drove to the cat cafe.

The cat cafe was closed, a fact the lady had neglected to mention, and I had neglected to notice on my driving directions.

OK.

I put in directions for a pet store that had animals from KCK.

Blue collar animals.

You dig?

Union animals.

Yeah.

I drove to the pet store. On the interstate, I looked over and saw a white van with ladders on the roof, and a man holding a tiny white dog on his lap. The dog was looking out at me and I almost peed because it was so cute (my dad’s dog has the same reaction to me). The man smiled at me and waved.

I went in, triumphant, overcaffeinated. I went to the windows where normally you see cats and you’re like, noooo, I can’t take you home, you beautiful bastard, and saw no one.

I went back to the car. Goddamn it. I wanted to adopt NOW.

I called the humane society. “We should have cats there.”

I went back in.

There were cats in there.

They were black.

I had imagined a tuxedo cat for my next cat. Or one at least partly white.

There were three babies in there: two short haired girls who were black with white spots on their chests, and one hyper baby boy with long fur who was dying to meet me. DYING.

DYING.

I approached one of the girls first, and I liked her energy.

But the boy. I had intended to get a boy. I just like the idea of balancing male and female energy at home.

I had never had a significant relationship with a long-haired cat. This guy’s body fur wasn’t super long, but he had a tail like a feather. I was into it.

A couple came in, and started looking at one of the girls. “Oh, I feel better now. If you choose one, I won’t feel so bad.”

“Oh, we’re not getting a cat, we’re just saying hi. They need love.”
Shit.

Long hair? He was only seven months. To look at more cats was going to require me making phone calls, which I was not prepared to do.

I got an employee to come over.

“Okay, so you have to give us $45 exactly in cash, or a check.”

Ah, ok.

That was insane.

But the store happened to be a five minute drive from my credit union.

I filled out forms and drove to my bank.

I came back, brought in my carrier.

“Are you going to change his name?” the employee asked.

“Oh, yes,” I said. His current name was… Salem? I’ve already forgotten. This kid wasn’t getting a random black cat name.

I began a long period of obsessing about names.

My original choice, “Roosevelt Franklin,” didn’t really suit him. He didn’t seem that serious. He was more like a very assertive squirrel in love with life.

Gus-Gus was an option. Gus is the cloud in a great Pixar short. And a mouse in Cinderella.

Benvolio was an option. But I wasn’t sure I was down with “Benny.”

A “Hamilton” reference came up in my internet time wasting. Lafayette. Lafayette was French, super assertive, a great guy everyone loved, who was played by a great actor.

I wasn’t sure about the nickname status… I was referring to him as “Monkey” and “Muppet” for the moment.

I think it’s Lafayette.

Lafeyette Lionni Schurman. (Lionni for Leo Lionni.)

His sister is Leia Simone Schurman (Simone for Simone de Beauvoir.)

You get older, you have a lot more names that won’t work because you’ve named previous pets (why had we named all those hamsters!?!), previous students, too many humans you knew already.

Lafayette may stick.

Three syllables?

Well, I’m E-liz-a-beth, after all.