Here’s how I was converted into a cat person

Growing up, I always had cats and I always hated them.

I have to ask, what is up with every cat’s fascination with batting anything that doesn’t belong to them? Oh my goodness, thank you so much, cat, but I honestly did not need that hair elastic which you not only swatted off of my dresser but also then immediately consumed. It isn’t just hair elastics they decide to throw to the floor: it’s bobby pins, keys, shiny buttons, attractively shaped bottles, and miscellaneous strings.

This knocking over of everything most often happens in the middle of the night, as well. You know, while you’re having that perfect dream in which you finally meet Channing Tatum, hit the lottery, and achieve financial independence and then your cat swats your glass perfume bottle off of your desk (which coincidentally scares him half to death) and you’re jolted awake and away from all that dream-perfection.

After you’ve shot out of bed using your table lamp as some sort of threatening, murderer-repelling weapon, you realize, no, it was just your cat, who has now hidden himself somewhere in your room. All you want is to be comforted, and then you encounter your cat’s complete lack of reciprocated affection.

ALL I WANT TO DO IS LOVE YOU, EVEN WHEN YOU ANNOY ME, AND YOU WON’T LET ME.

If you try and cuddle a cat when he doesn’t want to be cuddled, you’ll end up with puncture wounds in your arm, legs, and sometimes your face. This is just the icing on the cake. They will throw fits of rage, hiss, growl, and flail until they are returned to the floor. They do not want a hug, a kiss, or even a butt scratch unless it is on their terms.

After all of this, I vowed to never be a cat owner once I left home. Then I saw a seven-week-old kitten on Craigslist.

He looked like Garfield and I needed to have him, because I couldn’t stop picturing him drinking coffee with the newspaper at my kitchen table. So I got him, and he completely changed my opinion on cats. He willingly showed me affection. He even purred when I cuddled him at night!

Yes, his favorite thing to do is chew my shoelaces and my phone charger (which I have had to replace several times now), but he’s mine. And unlike the cats I had before him, he became my best friend by simply being the adorable, mischievous ninja he is.

Each morning he licks my nose to wake me up, curls up in my arm, and purrs himself to sleep. Like, what did I do to be deemed worthy of your love, feline? I am greeted at the door with meows almost like a dog (except dogs don’t meow, so, you know, not like a dog at all) when I come home.

When I lay down in bed, he won’t sleep anywhere else but on my legs, which baffles me. Everything I own is covered in his hair and no lint roller in the world can do a proficient job of removing it all, which means my cat is permanently a part of me, in every outfit I wear. But he makes up for his annoying cat behavior by being almost human at times.

When I cry, he sits with me and lets me squeeze him real tight, which usually results in him being covered in runny mascara. He doesn’t seem to mind, but who really knows. His little kitty-soul has touched my heart and, just like that, I now love cats.

April Rogers is a 22-year-old writer from Boston, and a Communications major at Southern New Hampshire University. She’s also a Harry Potter fanatic, and a lot of people think she’s still in high school because she’s only 4’11. She hopes to receive her Masters degree in School Counseling and live off the grid in Maine with her husband.

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