The question was whether she’d be amenable to adopting a cat and, frankly, I had expected her to agree the minute I asked.
“I am not opposed to it, just that it might be soon…how ’bout in the spring?”
Not your typical animal person, Iris nevertheless married me and my four cats, since they were non-negotiable. Along the way, she even had a hand in adopting two more.
Over twenty-plus years, one by one, the cats were gone.
The last one, though, that one sure got under her skin. She took over most of his care during the final month of his life.
I had never heard her weep as she did the night Storm passed.
***
Fast-forward to last week.
“Hi, I’m here at the animal shelter!”
She had gone downtown directly from work after I’d sent her five photos of candidates for us to visit over the weekend.
“It’s first come, first served, so I rushed, but Dash was adopted in the interim. The fucking train got stuck,” Iris exclaimed.
An hour later:
“He is ours, he’s ours.”
“He is READY. He is perfect, perfect, perfect.”
Both got Ubered home.
The kitten who survived alone in a parking lot downtown now owns Iris.
He tolerates me, but it looks like this time around, she is the favored one, his kahu.
Go figure.
Tobias hit the jackpot.
theleakingcoconuts.com 