Update: I am no longer lonely downstairs in my parent’s basement—now I have a cat!

A cute, playful, gentle, spaz-tastic, cuddly orange kitten, to be precise.

Meet Penny!

As I’ve probably mentioned before in my other articles, I love cats. However, my mom was allergic, so for a long time, I couldn’t have one. Funny story, my mom’s still allergic, but Penny found her way into my life anyway.

It was a rather crazy series of events that led up to me meeting Penny.

How I Met Penny

It all started with me being an emotional wreck. I was literally wearing a hoodie, playing some Minecraft, and switching between emotional numbness and random crying spells.

We had a family camp out going on that I did not want to go to, but my loving family kept on inviting me to go anyway, and I decided at the last second that I would go. I shoved a bunch of crap into a backpack and completely forgot to pack my contact lens stuff, much less a toothbrush. (I guess I figured I would sleep with my contacts in and my teeth could just… fend for themselves?)

At the same time as the camp out, there was a D&D thing happening that my brother wanted to attend. The plan was that he and I would meet up with everyone else for dinner around the campfire, and then he would drive off to go to the D&D thing, coming back to spend the night at the campsite later. I was going to stay with the rest of my family and camp out, but my brother ended up having a rough time while driving us to the campground (he’d just gotten his license and accidentally ran a red light at a weird intersection with temporary traffic lights), and I felt that it might be comforting if I came along with him for the drive.

So, after we finished our hot dogs, tin foil dinners, and s’mores (a few of which didn’t make it and died in the fire due to my flawed technique), I got in the passenger’s seat again, with my brother at the wheel, and we drove off. I took my phone with me but I can’t remember if I took anything else besides my mini Minecraft backpack.

For clarification—I actually had two backpacks, one with the stuff I packed for camping (my a bigger, striped backpack), and the other one, my mini backpack, which contained my wallet and phone and car keys and whatnot. The bigger striped backpack I left at the campground with my family. (This detail will somehow matter later, I promise.)

We arrived at the building where the activity was happening, and things went somewhat how I expected them to go—they had multiple shorter campaigns happening in different rooms, someone brought all of their cool D&D stuff, people got to have their own free dice set if they wanted one, and there was fantasy-themed food. Refreshments, if you will.

My favorites were the dragon claws, the coins, the dragon scale cookies, and the Mana potion (which strangely tasted somewhat similar to blue Hawaiian Punch). The Health potion was pretty good too but I didn’t enjoy it as much (it tasted like cherry Koolade).

Since I hadn’t originally planned on being at the activity at all I hadn’t made a character or anything, so I decided not to join any of the campaigns and instead chat with other people out in the hall who had just come to watch and socialize.

I was a part of several interesting conversations, one of which was about zombies. I don’t usually talk about zombies with other people but I guess if you find a certain kind of people, that’s what you talk about.

And I think it was around the time when we were on the topic of zombies when I noticed one of the gals answer her phone. I wasn’t sure who she was talking to or what about but for some reason, it caught my attention.

I continued chatting for a while after that until, all of the sudden, at around 9:30-10:00 pm, a guy came through the door holding a fairly large cardboard box.

As you might have guessed, that cardboard box held kittens. Four of them. There was a black one, a gray one, a tortoiseshell, and lastly, a ginger kitten.

(You can still see the gray one above, he's just been smooshed by his siblings.)

They were about three weeks old. Very small still, very sleepy and mewy (especially when you picked one of them up). The guy was bringing them to the girl who had been on the phone. Apparently he was the one she’d been talking to.

He had found the kittens and their mother in his fire pit, just as he was about to go and light a fire. The mother had run off and left the kittens. He had asked the girl to take care of the kittens and planned to try and catch the mother cat, and so the girl asked the rest of us if we could watch the kittens while she went to the store for some kitten formula. We happily agreed.

The kittens were oohed and awed over the whole time, and ended up getting passed around to every room in the building because someone always came out into the hall, found out about the kittens, and wanted to hold one.

The first magic moment for me though was when I picked up the little ginger kitten for the first time.

“Penny.”

The name rang in my mind.

I knew that was her name. I didn’t even know her gender for sure yet, but I felt that she was a female kitten, and that was her rightful name.

We found out what all the kittens’ genders were later and I found out that even though most orange cats are often male, the little ginger cat was indeed female.

I held the other kittens too, but something about the little ginger cat stood out to me. I think it was her color. I realized my hair color was somewhat close to her fur color and I think that’s what did it. She was very cuddly with me too. She would turn into a little cat loaf (a Penny-loaf!) and just sleep in the crook of my elbow. She was very, very warm, almost hot (like a freshly baked bread loaf), and very fluffy and soft.

(Gray boi is still smushed, but look at her super tiny mittens!)

Another girl I was talking to earlier (not the one who had been on the phone, different girl), we’ll call her Maroon, was not interested in coming up with names for any of the kittens. She said she didn’t want to get too attached. I don’t blame her, because I certainly got attached for sure.

This was different though. Normally, I would see cats and love them, and totally want one of my own, but in the back of my mind, I would remind myself that I couldn’t have a cat right now because my mom is allergic but I could get one once I moved out. This time, however, I felt like I should ask if I could adopt one of the kittens (in my heart I already knew which one I wanted). I thought to myself, the worst they could say is no. Maybe, things will be different this time.

My family and I had recently watched “A Cat Named Bob” before I met Penny (it’s a wonderful, hope-filled movie that I highly recommend watching), which probably wasn’t a coincidence. The movie was based on a true story about a man that was struggling with overcome a meth addiction when a certain cat came along and turned his life around. The cat in the movie was also a ginger cat, like Penny. I had a thought that having a kitten might be really healing for me.

I told the girl who would be taking care of the kittens until they were old enough to be adopted that I would like to adopt a kitten, the orange kitten specifically. I just had to call and ask my parents first. She was delighted at the idea of a kitten already having a home so soon and said she hoped my parents said yes.
I called Mom and told her the whole story, and asked if I could have a kitten.

The second magic moment happened was when I heard the answer was yes.

I was thrilled.

At midnight when we finally finished our activity, I was thrilled. When we got into the car and I called my parents again and I figured out that I would be sleeping at home after all due to not having my contact lens stuff, I was thrilled. When I climbed into bed wearing different Pjs because I left my other ones at the campsite, and lay my head on the other spare pillow I still had, I was thrilled. While saying my prayers, I was still thrilled and I said lots of thank yous. God had a little kitten in store, just for me, and I was very very happy.

Journey Towards Adoption

The girl who took care of the kittens deserves a name. There’s actually multiple girls that were her roommates that all need names really, but I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Anyway, we’ll call the main girl Dr. Kona, and her one friend and roommate (whom I texted quite a bit about the kitten) whom we’ll call Vin.

I was still very thrilled the morning after I met Penny, and I chatted with my family about it. Mom said that she thought having a little kitten would be very healing for me, echoing the thought I had had (although it was more abstract in my head). Dad was super duper excited. He loves cats. He wanted the cat to come hang out with him in his office (he works from/at home), but Mom unfortunately put the kibosh on that. Oh well, maybe, eventually, we can change her mind…

Dr. Kona invited me to come visit the kittens, if I wanted to, and so I came over a few times to help out with feeding them and bathing them (but honestly, I mostly just picked them up and cuddled them—and also watched them play, when they got a little bigger). I wanted to bond with Penny and also just have another opportunity to see her.

I also started planning obsessively. I found scratching posts on Amazon and just the right brand of cat litter as well as the right litter box, and a bunch of cat toys. (Of course one of them was a laser. Let me tell you, it’s been a life saver when it comes to distracting Penny… and getting all her zoomies out.) I figured out exactly where everything would go (the food bowls, the scratching posts, the litter box, etc.), and threw everything I knew would get destroyed into a bucket (and now I wonder if I even need all that stuff). I also found some fuzzy blankets, one to cover my laundry basket, and one just for a snuggle blanket for Penny.

You gotta strategize these things. Kittens are no joke. Imagine a toddler, but with very sharp teeth and needle claws, enhanced agility, and a hunt-and-kill instinct. I was bringing a curious, energetic, bouncy, scrambling furry creature into my space. A creature that wasn’t human and would never speak English. Very cute, yes. Very cuddly and fluffy and friendly and purry at times, yes. But I knew. I knew what I was signing up for. I knew it was time to say goodbye to scratch-free bed sheets and thread-loopy-free pants. My pristine, perfectly organized life was going to be severely altered by this cat.

Anyway, before I actually brought her home, I strategized my strategies until everything seemed as ready as it could be (I knew I would be learning and adjusting some things, but I wasn’t too worried). Then I simply just had to wait.

Teen me, who had obsessed over the warrior cats series and had been dreaming of this moment (literally getting a cat) for what seemed like her whole life, was absolutely losing it waiting for 4 weeks. She  could think of nothing else. Another part of me (anxiety brain) was freaking out, and trying to convince me the whole time that somehow we just couldn’t have this cat and nothing would work out, even going to the point of telling me over and over that they (the people fostering the kittens) were totally gonna give Penny away to someone else. Then of course Mrs. Organized part of me was the one still obsessively strategizing the whole time, problem-solving along the way and well, organizing. That part of me made certain that we would bring home this cat.

I’m not even kidding, as Penny got closer to being old enough for adoption, it got more and more stressful. At first I didn’t have any info from the fosters about where I would pay for Penny or pick her up or anything. Then after figuring out that part, I went to the website to submit an application for adoption, and I couldn’t find Penny’s pet profile. I ended up having to “hack” the system to find her because of the shelter’s busted website—basically, I found out the pets had 5 digit numbers linked to their profiles that showed up in the page links, and so I changed the number in the page link until I found her profile. Then I emailed the people specifically because they weren’t responding to my application.

Then, finally, the day came when Penny was ready to be brought home. 

Enter the Cat

We went to Walmart and I bought the last things I was missing—a pet carrier and cat food. I had no idea what to pick, but we asked another person in the aisle who was shopping for their own cats for a recommendation, and they gave us their suggestions, which definitely helped me decide.

Then we drove off on our merry little way to Columbia. It was raining. When we got there, it was still pretty wet, and while we waited inside, it poured. Then, when we were bringing Penny out to the car in her carrier, it briefly stopped raining. When we got home, I released Penny from the carrier and gave her some food, and she proceeded to explore.

Now here we are, about a month in (I brought her home June 3rd). We are getting our groove. There’s been a lot of adjusting, and that’s not always easy, but I’m happy to have her around.

The first two weeks were especially nutty. I had bought cat toys for Penny to mess with, but for some reason I thought I’d just buy mostly a bunch of catnip-filled toys. 3 crinkle catnip fish, and a banana that was stuffed with only dried catnip. As if that weren’t bad enough, I left the catnip toys strewn about on my rug, 24/7, for Penny to mess with. She had full access to them, and you could smell that catnip banana from pretty far away. It was very potent.

My girl’s eyes were deep, dark pools filled with murderous intent for an entire week, at least. She was completely jacked up on catnip. It was eternal zoomies, all day every day. My mom figured out what was going on and pointed out the problem to me, so I removed all the catnip toys and gave Penny some handmade toys instead—a sock fish, Phineas (made by me out of a black sock with pineapples on it), two conglomerations of fabric and ribbons on the end of a string, a smaller one and a bigger one (also made by me, I used cut up strips of denim and fleece and random assortments of ribbons), and a sock-puppety thing, Shauna (made by my mom).

I also crumpled up some paper since I quickly found out that Penny likes to murder paper. She’ll tear it with her teeth and eat it… sigh. I can’t leave any paper out anymore, although that’s probably a good thing.
The laundry basket blanket came in handy for protecting my laundry (somewhat), but also made for a good cat-nap tent. The snuggle blanket (aqua-colored and fluffy) made for a fantastic bed. Penny still loves to knead it. The laser saved many a random thing from getting mauled by crazy cat (including me), and the scratching posts… well, those didn’t work out so well. Penny scratches them and climbs them like she’s supposed to, but she also uses them as a cat highway and it makes it way easier for her to jump/climb all over me and use my body as a scratching post (terrifying!).

Man, sometimes it pays to be an ENFP. I’ve had to make use of my Ne constantly to stay ahead of this cat… I may have even developed some Se skills too, I swear I’m more aware of my surroundings now (because Penny will stare at me from some unseen hiding place with her ultra dilated pupils swallowing my entire being and then will jump out to murder my leg… or my face heh).

Penny helps me though. She does. Because of Penny, I now make my bed almost every day. It’s a wonderful feeling of accomplishment that I get to enjoy, because for the longest time, it was a small task that felt absolutely impossible. I go to bed earlier now too, because it’s not like I can sleep in very much with Penny living in the same space as me.

Another thing that Penny does is she helps me get out of my head, away from negative thinking patterns that are much easier to maintain in a quiet room with nothing going on around you. It’s so calming to cuddle a furry, purring thing that rubs their face against yours and falls asleep in your arms. And taking care of Penny is uplifting. I love to make her happy, to hear her purr and see how happy she is when I play with her. I love making up new games with her and having one-sided conversations. She’s not a human, and I don’t think of her as one—she’s my kitty friend. A companion. Someone to remind me that I’m not alone.

She also serves as a reminder of my journey towards becoming myself again—relearning to roar.

She’s my little mini lioness. 

Tags: JustMe, AllPosts