18. CAT

Adopting a cat is an entirely different process from adopting a dog. With dogs, it’s all very regimented. Visitation hours and stuff. With cats, they’re like, “What do you want? Cats?” You say yeah, and they say, “Great. Grab however many you want—they’re strewn throughout the building.”

And then you walk around for three hours trying to find one that likes you. At the end of the day, we’d narrowed it down to four possibilities:

• An 11-year-old unicorn beast, but the horn is a wart instead of a horn. Likes being touched. REALLY likes being touched on the wart
• The statistical average of all cats. 5 years old, medium hair, kind of likes petting, kind of hates it, mostly is just around
• A blimp monster with tiny legs poking out
• A squirrel-like creature of unknown age and origin who seemed genuinely desperate to touch us with his whole body at the same time

We went with the desperate one. He seemed like he wanted it the most. We named him Squirrel because that’s what he looks and acts like. Pretty straightforward.

Squirrel’s best friend is a green and yellow mouse toy.

They have a mercurial relationship. Not on Mouse’s end—Mouse isn’t real—but as far as Squirrel is concerned, the drama never stops.

I don’t understand how he maintains it. Every day, he finds new inspiration for doing all manner of bizarre things to his mouse friend.

My handle on their relationship is limited to the basics. Like, I can tell when he’s mad at it because he puts it in the bathroom. I get that. Sometimes, when you’re so fed up with your mouse friend that you can’t even look at it, you’ve gotta do something. Teach it a lesson. Put it in the bathroom so it can think about itself.

It’s always antagonizing him—falling off the bed, hiding behind the water bowl when he least expects it, making everybody feel stupid with that infuriating look on its face.

That isn’t the only kind of fight they have, though. Some are more involved.

For example: One day, Mouse got wet. Squirrel took it as a personal attack, and things got weird for a while.

Another day, I walked into the bedroom, and Squirrel was doing his actual best to shove Mouse all the way down his throat. I don’t know what happened to provoke this, but he seemed extremely motivated.

When Mouse started to fall apart, we bought new mouse toys. We thought this would work. I mean, why wouldn’t it? He obviously has the power of imagination on lockdown, so why wouldn’t he be able to seamlessly transition between mouse friends? None of them are real—just pretend it’s the same mouse and move on with your life.

He hates the new mice. He refuses to acknowledge them. If they try to be his friends, he puts them in the bathroom.

I suppose it’s noble of him to be so loyal to Mouse. I mean, yeah: no other mouse could ever compete with what these two have been through together. I understand why it would be infuriating when they try to insert themselves into the relationship. That’s very rude of them. How dare they.

He obviously hates them, but unlike with Mouse, there’s no passion behind it. He just straight up hates them and doesn’t want to be their friend, end of story.

I don’t know what the future holds for them, but they’ll figure it out. They need each other too much to let anything stand between them for long.