We had a list, because what do I know?  My experiences with pet ownership involved two prematurely deceased hamsters and a sadly neglected guinea pig that gave my mom asthma.  If we were going to make the commitment, it would be to perfection.  Male, 8-9 weeks of pure, rambunctious kittenhood, loving, cuddly, sweet, those white little paws and a white belly, if we could help it.

We had only just allowed ourselves to have a color preference, and had been tailoring our daily  kitten photo emails to each other accordingly.  There’s a wide world out there, we figured – there’s no reason we can’t get exactly what we want.  Shelters were over us; we could only take one, we can’t be home all day.  We were tired of the women who were so tired of us, and our brand of kitten-hungry, baby-practicing yuppies.  Only this woman on Craigslist had declared us fit, and had opened her swarming apartment’s doors to us.

Kittens!  Everywhere, kittens – scampering, cavorting, squirming, jumping on us, running away.  A teeny long-haired girl, not yet weaned, cuddled up in my palms.  Vetoed by E. – doesn’t fit the list.  So we kept looking, crawling under tables, picking up warm, boneless little bodies that hung slackly on either side of our hands, until eventually the paper-perfect one came flying in from an unknown direction, skidding to a stop into our legs.  Male, black and white, socks, belly, right age.  “Ah, him,” she said, shaking her head gently.  “We call him Beelzebub.”

E. and I exchanged glances.  “Um,” I asked, “ironically?”

“Well, let me put it to you this way.  He’s just discovered how to pull down all the clothes off my hangers.”

“For fun!” Her boyfriend called from the kitchen.

“Yeah, for fun.  He’s sweet, sometimes.  Then he can be…bipolar.”

We invited him into our laps, cuddled up to him, rolled around with him on this stranger’s kitchen floor.  He struggled out of our arms and attacked a cat toy with his teeth.  Maybe this is just who kittens are, I thought, dreams of soft, sleeping fur slowing crumbling.  Maybe all that talk about knowing it’s the right one, or them choosing you – maybe that’s all just a myth we tell ourselves to justify opening our hearts and homes to a cute, oblivious little animal.  Maybe we project a personality because otherwise we’re just the saps cleaning up their poop.  Boy, we’re idiots, we humans.

Then a little gray one moseyed over to E., who was wresting the toy away from the others.  With a free hand, E. offered him a little scratch, which was willingly received, purringly leaned-into.  Beelzebub was hanging from the toy, hovering, death-gripped, while I sat there, desperately willing myself to fall in love with him and oblivious to the bond cementing a foot away.  E. looked down at his other hand, and then, apologetically, at me.

“I think I want the gray one.”

***

IT’S BEEN A week, and we’re changed.  I had no idea that it could feel like this, that after such a short amount of time, the idea of him being gone makes our house – happily occupied by us for almost two years and accommodating our own love beautifully – feel empty.  He cuddles up to us, smells us, trusts us, sleeps on us, plays with us.  We let him disrupt our own intimacy as open up our unit of two to someone else – he’s in our bed, he joins us for breakfast, he occupies the stroking hand that E. had previous reserved for my back alone.  He creates insecurities.  I worry about him when I’m at work, what we must think of us when we abandon him during the day.  I watch him with E. and wonder if he’s secretly choosing allegiances.  I stare at him with a heart full of the warmest, most uncomplicated kind of love, examining the subtle striping on his hind legs, the dark burgundy of his nose, the white spots on his belly.  “These photos don’t even come close,” I told E. with the authority of a parent.

Which, I can say, now, as I – we – take this small step, feel this attachment, defend his behavior, lovingly scoop his poop, feel ourselves distracted  from each other, and irrevocably amplify our lives: I am not ready to be yet.  But I think, just maybe, I kinda get it.

The Gray One: Egon Schiele-Spengler Avilanch.  In case our personalities weren’t already evident.