How I Became a Cat Lady

I’ve always been a cat lovin’ kind of girl. I grew up with cats (and a dog, and a bird, and fish.) And then I went to college, where I couldn’t have a cat. So I had to figure out something else.


I started my independent adult life off with betta fish and plants. The plants died. The betta fish actually lived (for the most part.) One of them died when I came home from school at the hands of my parent’s cat Gordita. But the other two made a cross-country trip with me to Michigan where I did another couple years of school.


Then winter came, and the snow, and the below freezing temperatures and my California mind frame didn’t get a heater for my fish. My fish froze. I then had access to my roommates’ dogs. They weren’t cats but they sort of filled that void.


Then I graduated and decided that Michigan and snow just weren’t for me and high-tailed it back to the warm West Coast.


In 2006 I decided to try plants again. They died … again.


That’s when I decided that I needed to have a cat again. One day I went to a shelter and met Stitch.


Stitch had been there for a couple of weeks. They thought he was around 2 years of age. He had been abandoned by his original owners and had been living in an alley way with his own couch and a refrigerator up to being brought into the shelter. Stitch also had thumbs on all four of his paws and wasn’t too fond of people…except for me.


They brought him into a meet and greet room and he came right up to me. When I saw the astonished looks on their faces I decided that Stitch and I were meant to be. So Stitch came home to live with my sister and me in Orange County. And I became an official Cat Lady.


Stitch had a couple of cat trees, all the toys he could want, good quality food and a cat fountain.


I’ve always joked that Stitch is an OC Cat. He is far too obsessed with how he looks. He is picky as heck about where he drinks his water from. He also doesn’t act like the stereotypical “manly, macho” tom cats. Nope. Stitch is by far the metrosexual of male cats. I’m certain that if allowed he’s get his eye brows waxed, he’d shop at Banana Republic for clothes and he’d go lounge out at the beach all day.


Stitch and I had a pretty good life going on. Then I met my ‘now” husband, and his three kids. And we moved up to the colder, Bay Area in Northern California. And now we have the new baby in the house.


Sometimes Stitch gives me a glare asking “How could you do this to me?”


All I can say back is “I’m sorry.”

Stitch doing what he does best - napping