When I was eight, we had three cats: Pippy, Motely and Misty. I didn’t think this was enough cats. I thought houses should have more like ten or eleven cats, all different colours and some with stripes and others with spots and maybe even a tiger. I thought there should be cats draped across couches and sitting on windowsills and pulling food out of the cupboards. I wanted to have to squeeze into bed around maybe a hundred cats that were sleeping there with me.

So, three cats was definitely not enough cats.

One day my mum took us grocery shopping. When I was eight, grocery shopping was the most boring kind of shopping we could go on. Video game shopping? ✓ Book shopping? ✓ Hamburger shopping? ✓ Grocery shopping? ⨯ I would rather wash my nanna’s underwear. (Now that I’m an adult I like grocery shopping because I can get as many flavours of chips as I want.)

The only good thing about going grocery shopping with my mum was the pet shop at the end of the arcade. In the old days, when I was eight and dinosaurs still roamed the earth, pet shops often had kittens in the front window to draw you in. I guess they thought if you saw a kitten, you would come and buy an expensive tropical fish tank. I always, always, always made my mum stop to look at the kittens.

This one day, after we had been dragged around the supermarket without even stopping to eat food samples, we looked at the kittens. There were four: a tabby one, a tortoiseshell one, a grey one and a fluffy black and white one. A good number to add to my pitiful collection at home. They were ten dollars each.

I immediately fell in love. ‘I love you,’ I said to the black and white kitten. It had big green eyes and a long fluffy tail and a black smudge across its nose. ‘You are my soulmate.’ I told my mum that the kitten and I were soulmates. I told the man who owned the pet shop that the kitten and I were soulmates. I told my mum again. I reminded her that if you’re separated from your soulmate, the weight of the world will crush you. She said, ‘Don’t be so dramatic.’

Then she said, ‘We need to get the milk in the fridge,’ which is the most boring part about extremely boring grocery shopping.

I left my soulmate in the window of the pet shop. I cried a bit. I told Pippy, Motely and Misty we wouldn’t be expanding our cat kingdom yet. I put the milk in the fridge. I read a book on the couch. I thought about how to get a kitten in secret.

Then my mum said, ‘I’m going to the sewing shop.’ She went to the sewing shop a lot, to buy fabric to keep in the cupboard and never look at again (she still has some of this fabric in her cupboard, and I am much older than eight now), so I thought this sounded pretty normal. ‘Okay,’ I said, and drew a picture of myself and my 900 loyal cat subjects.

I waited for Mum to come home and do something with me. I waited and waited. I thought, how can a sewing shop be this interesting? I made a sandwich. I fought with my brother. I told my dad I was bored. I wrote a story about a girl who finds a family of cats in her shed.

It felt like days before Mum got home, but when she opened the door she just had a small cardboard box. I thought, why did it take so long to get one box? And, why would you put sewing stuff in it? And, why is the cardboard box kind of moving by itself?

Then the box meowed.

At first I just jumped up and down for a bit. She hadn’t gone to the sewing shop! She had gone back to the pet shop because she understood how important soulmates and cat kingdoms are! Mum put the box on the floor and opened the top and I thought I had actually stopped breathing and then …

… and then …

… a kitten crept out. It had big green eyes and a long fluffy tail and a black smudge across its nose. ‘Patches,’ I said. ‘Welcome to my cat kingdom.’