Meet Cute: How We Met Baby Cat (Part One)

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Hi, I’m Nicole! Read my introduction to learn more about me and my distinguished Burmese, Mr. Baby Cat.
They say ‘People don’t choose cats, cats choose people,’ and if that’s true, it’s especially true of Burmese cats.
As a garden-variety male who likes to keep life as simple and streamlined as possible, I tried my darndest to resist the advances of Baby Cat when he first came into our lives. But at a certain point, the time and effort spent fruitlessly attempting to maintain the status quo becomes more exhausting than giving in and floating with the tides of fate. In other words, sometimes you’re better off just letting the cat in.
Baby Cat’s origin story starts with a broken cat door and no cat.
Setting the Scene
In 2015, Nicole and I had a bedroom on the third story of a house perched atop a cliff on Auckland’s rugged west coast. To this day, that house is one of the most magical places I have ever lived.
Our bedroom had glass French doors that would clatter all night in the winter storms and opened to a small balcony overlooking the endless Tasman Sea. We would spend every evening out there, watching the sunset beyond huge swells that marched to the black sand below.
On the second level of the home were the living spaces and kitchen. From the kitchen there was a glass door that led to a subtropical garden outside, and within that glass door was a broken cat door.
The broken cat door was obviously a security issue, but considering we lived in a remote surfing village in New Zealand, the chances of a very fortunate intruder stumbling across the broken cat door were slim to none. Consequently, the cat door found its way to the bottom of our ‘To-Do’ list every week and remained a consistently overlooked and ignored feature of the house.
For the most part, the cat door remained uneventful and eventually faded so far into the background that it dropped off the ‘To-Do’ list altogether. That was until one evening when a fortunate intruder actually did stumble across the broken cat door and our procrastination came to a head.
Baby Cat’s Break-In
Nicole and I were asleep in bed at the time of the break-in. It must have been somewhere between 2 and 3 am on an idle Tuesday, and we hadn’t heard a sound as the intruder prowled every room in the house.
It was Nicole who noticed his presence first. She stirred and sat up in bed, shaking me awake, and asking perhaps the strangest question I’ve ever been asked upon waking.
‘Are you wearing socks?’
I rubbed my eyes. ‘What?’
‘Socks, are you wearing them?’
‘No, why?’ My bare feet brushed against something soft and fluffy beneath our duvet. ‘Wait, are you wearing socks?’
Nicole shook her head, and several expletives may have been muttered at this point. Most of which were directed at the broken cat door and my procrastination around fixing it for the best part of a year.
It had all led to this—a moment in which I was convinced a possum had come through that broken cat door and found its way into arguably the coziest spot in the house—the warm space beneath our duvet at the foot of the bed.
‘No sudden moves,’ I whispered, wincing at the thought of the possum’s razor-sharp claws within striking distance of our bare feet. ‘On the count of three, we both jump out of bed at the same time. Got it?’
Nicole nodded.
‘One… two… three!’
We cartwheeled from the sheets like ninjas in a cheap 1980s Kung-Fu movie, heaving for air as our feet landed on the carpet. We stared at the small mound curled beneath the duvet at the bottom of the bed and gave each other a nervous look.
Opening the French doors to the balcony, I grabbed a boot as an ad-hoc weapon and hoped the possum would leap straight from the sheets, out the doors, into the night.
‘Same thing,’ I whispered. ‘We rip the duvet off on the count of three.’
Nicole nodded, grabbing hold of one corner.
‘One… two… three.’
We threw the duvet off the bed and I held the boot up, ready for the frenzied possum attack. There we stood, wide-eyed and wild-haired, every ounce of our attention directed at the crouched, frightened, furry ball of fur on the mattress. We locked eyes for the very first time with a very cozy and very lethargic Baby Cat.
I fell in love straight away. I mean, the nerve of the guy. Sure, I should have fixed the cat door sooner, but think of the audacity it must take to not only walk through a hole in a stranger’s kitchen door but to jump straight into bed with them afterward to play footsy. It’s borderline admirable.
Regardless, there he was, staring up at us with those green, dinner-saucer eyes, clearly wondering why we were so aggressively interrupting his sleep.
You know how the rest of this story goes—the cooing, the ‘can-we-keep-him’s’ and ‘it’s only for one night’— I never stood a chance. There wouldn’t have been a word of complaint to boot a cozy kitty cat with dilated pupils? Forget about it.
If I’m being honest, I didn’t mind being a pushover for this cat. There were only two things I knew for sure—he wasn’t ours, and (being a gorgeous Burmese), he certainly was somebody’s.
Deciding He Was Ours
Our first morning with Baby Cat commenced on the back of two caveats, put forward by yours truly—we don’t feed him, and we don’t encourage him to stay—somebody nearby almost certainly owned him and they’d be looking for him by morning.
Morning came without a word, so we knocked on the doors of every neighbour and posted Baby Cat’s photo to online community forums.
Nothing.
Not a soul had a clue who this cat was. We stared at him lounging in the afternoon sun of our living room. He certainly didn’t look like he was in a hurry to go anywhere. In fact, I could have sworn he was smiling, eyes closed, legs in full spread as he lay sprawled on his back.
‘What do we do?’ Nic asked.
‘I don’t know.’
I opened my phone and searched for any information I could find on Burmese cats. Ferociously loyal to their owners and energetic, the results said. I glanced up at the cat lounging nonchalantly in a stranger’s home and shook my head.
But the results also spoke of a cuddly, social, and trusting breed, often referred to as ‘dog-cat’ for their propensity to switch dog-lovers into cat-lovers with their dog-like loyalty and personality.
‘Let’s try something,’ I said.
We sat by Baby Cat and I cautiously attempted a tummy rub, the way I would with a lounging dog. When Baby Cat stirred, I jerked my hand back, expecting the usual slash-attack many cats would open if I’d ever tried to rub their tummies.
But Baby Cat just rolled further onto his back, eyes closed and leaning enthusiastically into the tummy rub.
‘You like him, huh?’ Nicole smiled.
‘I mean, if he needs a place to sleep again tonight, I’m not opposed to sharing our bed.’
And just like that, Baby Cat fell into our hearts. But his origin story isn’t over yet. We’ll deal with the rest of his escapades in Part Two…
- Read her previous article: Home at Last, From What Could Be Baby Cat’s Last Road Trip
- Read her next article: How We Met Baby Cat: Part Two