My life has always included cats. Even before owning a cat, I played with all the cats at the pet store inside the local mall and relentlessly begged my parents for one, who finally gave in somewhere in the early 1990s and let me adopt an orange tabby. As a young woman in my early 20s, I stumbled into owning not one but two cats and didn’t adopt any more mostly because one of them, the fierce gray tabby Katharine Graham, made it clear my apartment actually was her queendom and, outside of her adopted sister, Lilly, she would not share. Katharine passed in 2020, and Lilly in 2024, putting me in a position I had not been in for about two decades—catless woman.
It had its perks. Mr. Diana and I never had to worry about finding a cat sitter when we traveled. We didn’t have to obsess over making sure no food fell on the floor. If we wanted to sleep in, we did. But at some point after the Los Angeles wildfires, I decided it was time to let cats back into our lives. Rescue groups all over the region were getting flooded with new volunteers offering to foster animals after the fires burned more than 40,000 acres, destroyed more than 12,000 buildings, forced about 200,000 people to be evacuated, and killed 30. It seemed the least we could do as people who were fortunate enough to still have a home was open it up to new cats.
Except a lot had changed in pet adoption since my last foray in the mid-2000s, which is to say it too had been in certain ways gamified by social media. Never before had I used Petfinder, Instagram, or any social media to find an animal; I had either gone to a shelter that day or just been given one by the universal cat distribution system. Nowadays, even animals up for adoption are trying to go viral online because our great relocation to the apps has spared almost nobody outside of the extremely famous (and even they probably use UberEats). It’s here where I got lucky and Mr. Diana volunteered to scour the interwebs for our new cats, which led to him one day stumbling upon a bonded pair of 12-year-old cats up for adoption at a county shelter. He went to visit them, then called me and said they might be our cats—I just had to meet them.
It was not exactly love at first sight when I went to the shelter with Mr. Diana the following day, mostly because I literally couldn’t see them. Purrle, the black cat—her name sounds like “Pearl,” and yes, that’s how her previous owner spelled her name, get it?—burrowed so deeply under all her blankets that one of the shelter workers couldn’t believe there was a cat in her kennel. When she did extract Purrle so we could meet her in the visiting area, all she did was hide. She even rejected a Churu. Her brother, a brown tabby named Whiskers, wasn’t available to see at all because he had been placed in a separate building due to, we were told, aggressive and violent behavior toward people while in the main cat area—we would even have to sign an extra waiver to adopt him!
We didn’t get their full life story at the shelter, but we did get bits and pieces: They were bonded littermates, their previous owner had died, and the remaining family surrendered them to the shelter. Looking at the eager kittens bouncing around us, I did have a moment of doubt. But then someone at the shelter remarked that they were so surprised Purrle and Whiskers were being adopted so soon because the elderly cats normally sit there for months, and I knew it was the right thing to do.
Plus, I had a feeling that Whiskers had acted out not because he’s mean, but because of fear for this new, overwhelming environment. This feeling was confirmed in about our first minute in the car, when while in the safe confines of his carrier, he let me pet him. I took one look at his scrunchy but lovable face and decided his new name would be Chuck Whiskers, in honor of one of my favorite Miami Herald copy editors who was legendary for his eagle eye toward words, passion for rare orchids, and, yes, being a bit particular about certain things. Chuck, I decided, had simply been particular about his surroundings! I don’t doubt the shelter staff did what they had to do keep themselves and the public safe, but I’d be lying if I said that as a woman (or maybe just non-wealthy person) circa 2025, I didn’t relate to a creature dealing with some misplaced anger at an unfair-through-no-fault-of-their-own situation.
As for Purrle, she yowled every time our car went over 50 miles per hour, as she apparently is very passionate about safe roadways. (Actually, we found out later she does not like loud, sustained noises. Poor thing!)
We did what all new cat owners are advised to do upon adopting new animals, which was deposit them in the bathroom. They did as all new animals do, which was immediately find the best hiding spots. The cute, fluffy cave Mr. Diana bought for Purrle? She decided to hide under it instead. Chuck sufficed with behind the toilet, delivering a woefully wet and pathetic hiss to anyone who tried to pet him.
And so they stayed and stayed and stayed until … suddenly, they did not. That’s the funny thing about cats. They insist on doing everything on their timetable but they do get there, eventually. Chuck—whom I had now renamed Chuck B. Whiskers, Esq.—found his bravery first, breaking down for rubs, while Purrle—now redubbed Princess Purrle Paralegal—took more time in her blanket burritos. When we moved them from the bathroom to the bedroom, they backtracked at first, laughing in the face of my spouse’s attempts to block off beneath the bed and beelining under there anyway, then bounced back within a few days. Chuck found a spot he loves, beneath a rack of my dresses, and Purrle has developed a new favorite TV show, called “whatever is outside the window.” They play, they cuddle, they have sibling spats. They will probably backtrack again when we introduce them to the living room, which is to be expected. Despite some early hiccups—and some overdue dental work that they’ll soon have to receive—they’ve been everything we could have wanted.
They do not let us sleep in, and that’s OK. That part of being catless was overrated anyway.