Chapter 50

The rescue shelter is twenty minutes from the flat.

You find it on a Tuesday morning when neither of you has practice and the weather is doing something grey and soft outside the windows and Alysa looks up from her coffee and says “today?” and you say “today” and that’s that.

You have discussed the cat extensively.

Over the past three weeks the cat has been discussed from every angle — size, age, temperament, whether a kitten is ambitious given that you are both athletes with irregular schedules, whether an older cat would be better, whether two cats would be better than one and whether that is a conversation for another day.

“One cat,” Alysa said firmly, the third time you raised the two cats question.

“One cat,” you agreed.

“We’re not ready for two.”

“We’re getting one cat.”

“As a starter child.”

“Exactly.”

“One starter child.”

The shelter smells like animals and cleaning products and something underneath both of those that is warm and slightly chaotic in the way of places that are full of living things being cared for. A woman at the desk greets you — cheerful, practical, the particular energy of someone who loves what they do and has no time for people who don’t take it seriously.

She takes you seriously immediately.

You fill in the forms. Answer the questions. Explain your schedule and your apartment and the fact that you have a memory wall and a bench named Gerald and a plant that is thriving and you feel, you think, adequately prepared for a cat.

She nods.

Takes you to the cat room.

The cat room is — a lot.

In the best way.

Various enclosures, various cats, various personalities presenting themselves with varying degrees of interest in the two humans who have just walked in. Some ignore you completely. Some watch with the particular detached assessment of animals who have decided you must prove yourselves. One immediately begins performing — rolling, stretching, making eye contact with the focused intention of a creature who knows exactly what it’s doing.

You walk slowly.

She walks beside you.

You look at each cat seriously, the way you approach all things that matter.

And then.

Third enclosure from the end.

Small. Black and white — not evenly, just the particular random distribution of black and white that looks like someone started with a plan and abandoned it halfway through. One white ear and one black ear. A white patch over the left eye like a small cloud. The rest mostly black with a white chest and white paws that are slightly too big for the rest of her, the paws of a cat who has not entirely grown into herself yet.

She is sitting in the middle of her enclosure looking at you both with enormous yellow eyes and the expression of someone who has been waiting specifically for you and would like to know what took so long.

You stop.

Alysa stops.

The cat looks at you.

Looks at Alysa.

Looks back at you.

Makes a sound that is very small and very certain.

“Hi,” you say softly.

She makes the sound again.

“Alysa,” you say.

“I see her,” Alysa says.

“She’s—”

“I know,” Alysa says.

You look at each other.

Look back at the cat.

Who is now standing, having decided that the looking portion of proceedings is complete and it is time to move to the next phase, and is pressing her white cloud patch against the enclosure door with the energy of someone who has made a decision.

“That’s her,” you say.

“That’s absolutely her,” Alysa agrees.

Her name, according to her file, is currently Domino.

You both look at the file.

Look at the cat.

Look at each other.

“We’re renaming her,” you say.

“Obviously,” Alysa says.

The woman helps you with the carrier — borrowed from the shelter, a soft blue thing that the cat regards with suspicion and then enters with the resigned dignity of someone who has decided to allow this — and you carry her to the car between you, Alysa with the carrier and you with the bag of supplies that has somehow become enormous in the shelter shop despite your best intentions.

“We bought a lot of things,” you say, looking at the bag.

“She needs things,” Alysa says.

“We bought her a tiny jumper.”

“It was cold.”

“She’s a cat.”

“A cold cat potentially,” Alysa says, putting the carrier carefully on the back seat. “We don’t know her temperature preferences yet. We’re being cautious.”

You look at the tiny jumper in the bag.

You look at the cat in the carrier who is looking back at you through the mesh with those enormous yellow eyes.

“Cautious,” you say.

“Responsible,” Alysa says.

“We’re going to be absolutely terrible at this,” you say fondly.

“We’re going to be wonderful at this,” she says.

The apartment receives her the way the apartment receives everything — warmly and without fuss.

You set the carrier down in the living room and open the door and step back and wait, the way the shelter woman told you to — let her come out in her own time, don’t rush her, let her explore — and you both sit on the floor a respectful distance away and watch the carrier door.

Nothing for a minute.

Two minutes.

Alysa looks at you.

You look at Alysa.

A small black and white nose appears at the carrier door.

Disappears.

Appears again.

And then — slowly, with great ceremony, with the specific dignity of a cat who does things entirely on her own terms — she emerges.

Sits in front of the carrier.

Looks at the apartment.

Looks at the fairy lights on the bookshelf.

Looks at the memory wall.

Looks at the plant on the windowsill.

Looks at Gerald the bench in the hallway.

Looks at you.

Looks at Alysa.

Makes the small certain sound again.

And then she walks — not toward you, not yet, that would be too easy, that would be giving you too much too soon — toward the bookshelf, which she sniffs carefully, and then the memory wall, which she regards with what appears to be genuine critical interest, and then the plant, which she sniffs and decides against, and then the bench in the hallway, which she sits on.

Gerald, you think.

She sits on Gerald and looks back at you both from the hallway with enormous yellow eyes and the expression of someone who has assessed the situation and found it adequate.

“She likes Gerald,” Alysa says softly.

“She has good taste,” you say.

Her name comes to you at approximately nine o’clock that evening.

She has by this point investigated every room, sat in four different locations, eaten her dinner with great focus, and is now on the sofa between you — not beside you, between you, occupying the exact centre as though she has calculated it — with her eyes half closed and her white paws tucked neatly under her chest.

“Luna,” you say.

Alysa looks at you.

Looks at the cat.

The cat opens one yellow eye.

“Luna,” Alysa says softly, trying it.

The cat closes the eye again.

“She didn’t object,” you say.

“She didn’t object,” Alysa confirms.

Luna.

Small and certain and black and white and already completely at home on the sofa between you like she’s been here the whole time, like she was always going to be here, like the flat was waiting for her the same way it was waiting for everything else that has found its way into it.

At eleven she migrates.

You feel it before you see it — a small weight, deliberate movement, and then she is on your lap, turning once, twice, three times, the ancient cat ritual of making a place exactly right — and then she settles.

Closes her eyes.

Begins, very quietly, to purr.

You look down at her.

At the white cloud patch and the one white ear and the paws that are still slightly too big.

You look at Alysa.

Alysa is already looking at you.

With that expression — the open one, the luminous one — and something in it that is new, something that has been added by this evening, by this cat, by the particular domesticity of sitting on your sofa at eleven o’clock with a purring starter child between you.

“Hi,” she says softly.

“Hi,” you say.

Luna purrs.

The fairy lights do their thing.

The memory wall holds all its moments.

And in the sock drawer the ring waits, patient and certain, knowing something that nobody has said out loud yet but that is already completely true—

This family.

This one.

This is it.