I'm a cat person. I can't remember ever not having a cat in the house. So when I left my
parents' place and moved up to Minneapolis, there was no question that I would have to have
a cat. Of course, my boyfriend, the one I was moving in with, already had a cat. A huge,
cheerful, loveable cat named Speck. But Speck wasn't my cat. I wanted one of my very own.

So about a month after I moved in, I found myself standing in the Minneapolis Humane
Society, in a room with cages and cages filled with kittens and cats. How to choose? All
of them begged for attention, some more blatantly than others. The adult cats in the cages
at the end of the room were especially pleading, maybe sensing that their time was short.
The kittens played, unconcerned, completely unaware that they were on death row. Torn in
every direction, I finally selected a little black kitten, who chewed on my hair but was
mostly uninterested in me. I turned to my boyfriend, who was there to make sure only ONE
kitten came home with us.

"Here," I said, handing him the little ball of fur. "What do you think?" He took the
kitten, who started chewing on HIS hair, and I wandered away to let them get acquainted.
That was when I saw her.

She was a little larger than the kittens in the cage with her, and was sitting quietly next
to the bars, watching me with huge green eyes.


I was smitten. She blinked at me, and I reached to take her out, when suddenly the kitten
my boyfriend was still playing with decided to make a break for freedom. It took the two of
us and a volunteer ten minutes to get the little thing back in a cage, but we managed it. I
turned back to the wide eyed, quiet kitty's cage, expecting she'd gone on to other
amusements. But no, there she sat, at the door to the cage now, still watching me. I
looked back at her and she opened her mouth in the tiniest meow. When I opened the door to
her cage, she crawled into my arms eagerly, putting her front paws around my neck, rubbing
her head against my chin and purring. Who could resist such sweetness? I was hers, she had
me, that was that. I slipped her information card out of the holder on her cage, reluctantly
slipped her back into it for a moment, and went out to the lobby to adopt her.

I gladly laid my checkbook down for the adoption fee, and glanced around for a calendar to
tell me the date. My eyes happened to fall on the information card for my new baby, and I
realised with a jolt that her last day on earth was that very day, September 10. I wrote
my check out with numb fingers and read the rest of the card. Gwennie (yep, she had a name
already) was about three months, old, and had been a stray. I looked at the date of
execution (euphemized to "adoption deadline") again, and wondered how on earth someone could
have turned such a sweet cat out to live on the street and die either slowly, by starvation,
or horribly, by car, or dog, or by the lethal injection of the humane society. She was so
sweet. She also knew exactly how to play me.

I took her home that day, along with a bag of kitten food, and showed her the dish and
litterbox I'd bought for her. She purred. I told her what her name was, and she purred. I
looked at her, and she purred. I sat down on a chair, and she sat in my lap and purred. I
cuddled her against my chest, and she stuck her head under my chin and purred. In fact, I
don't think she stopped for the first week she was with me. Well, not until she threw up the
tapeworm, anyway, but she started purring again immediately afterward.

Here comes the sermon. Gwennie is an incredibly sweet cat, a little over a year old now.
My boyfriend's cat, Speck, also one of the most loving cats I've ever met, was also a humane
society kitty. And they were lucky. People were able to give them a home and food, and most
importantly, get them fixed. Thousands of animals die every year in humane socities and on
the streets because people aren't responsible enough to have their pets neutered or spayed.
If you want to teach your children about birth, don't use a pet to do it. Or if you think
it's fine to do it and then drop the unwanted kittens or puppies at the humane society, I
suggest you learn about death yourself and be there when those same animals are put to sleep.
Animals aren't toys. They're responsibilities. That was the first thing my parents taught
me, from my first gerbil to Gwennie.


Picture courtesy of and copyrighted by Oleg Volk