by R. Renee Bembry

Created on: October 15, 2009   Last Updated: September 18, 2011

Pet adoptions often bring to mind visions of eager animal lovers scrutinizing homeless cats or dogs behind cages at animal shelters. One might even visualize bird and bunny lovers checking out the more exotic types of creatures in pet stores or in breeder housing. Pet adoptions do not always occur because a cat person or dog person or other specific animal loving person goes in search of the perfect pet; however, sometimes adoptions occur when wayward animals find their perfect person. This was certainly the case in this true story about how my cat adopted me.

Scrawny little thing was Momma when Sissy set her on the living room floor after class one day. Whether lost or deserted, the cat had targeted Sissy's car, out of all the many vehicles in the university parking lot, as the one in which a compassionate human would welcome her to enter, and then spare her from the vile of future loneliness.

Following Momma’s twenty minute ride “home”, she entered my house with the words explore and conquer leading the way for her keen eyesight and superior sense of smell. Although a puny little thing, she paid no attention to her tiny physique. Once encountering my other cats, she immediately let them know that she would dish everything toward them but take nothing from them. In return, the other cats assessed her in wonderment - perhaps thinking she did not even smell as if she were from our county - but proceeded to stay out of her way.

As the days and the weeks passed, Momma's thriving appetite suggested she was making up for days, if not weeks, worth of time she might have spent alone and starving. On the other hand, of course, she might have been fattening up in case she found herself without a steady food supply again. Whichever was the case, she mostly alternated her time between eating, hanging out with me, and warding off the other cats.

In due course, Momma added a few needed ounces, and eventually pounds, to her scrawny frame. Although pleased that she was beginning to look like a well-fed healthy cat, on occasion, I had to remind Sissy that I did not want any more cats; and that I really did not know what we were going to do about Kitty, as we called her when first taking her in.

Unlike the indecisive me, Kitty continued to implement her own plans as to how things were going to work out. Having already made the decision that she was my cat and I was her cat person, she continued her move to keep the other cats away from me. If the other cats

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