I grew up in a household that always had pets, from long before I was born, to today and beyond. In fact, the hardest part of deciding to move to Japan for a year, was knowing I wouldn’t be able to see my two cats that whole time, and that they wouldn’t understand why I had disappeared.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve travelled plenty before, so they know I always come back. Plus, they’re living with my parents, where they’re perfectly happy and well taken care of. But they’re definitely the thing I miss most, it feels so strange to not have a cat climbing into my lap every time I sit down, or yelling at me for food as soon as I walk in the door after work.

My older cat, Luci, is 12 years old. Her hobbies include demanding cuddles, stealing people’s chairs, and watching videos of birds on people’s laptops.

We got her at the end of 2012, a few months after our previous cat passed away at 20. His name was Jess, and he was a year older than me, so he’d been a constant in my life, and we all felt his loss deeply. At first we weren’t going to get another cat, it seemed too strange with Jess gone, but eventually we decided it felt too weird to not have a cat in the house.

We wanted to get a kitten, but at that time, there were none up for adoption in our area. We checked with the SPCA, then called around local vets, and there were just no kittens to be had. After a few weeks, we learned about another, further away vet who we hadn’t talked to yet, through a family friend who had been to them before. We called them right away, and they told us they’d had three stray kittens dropped off that same morning. My mother and I went there immediately to meet them, and Luci walked straight up to us and started yelling the moment we opened the door. We met the other two as well, of course, but we both immediately knew that we were going home with Luci.

When we brought her home, she was terrified of the carrier, so when we were stopped in traffic for a while, I let her come out and sit in my arms instead. She kept looking out the window at the other cars around us, and we got a lot of laughs and waves from other drivers who saw her staring at them. She still hates carriers and cages to this day, and will scream her head off for the entire duration of the car ride, no matter how long it lasts.

Luci is the smartest cat I’ve ever met. I like to joke that she’s actually a human who was cursed to live as a cat, but if it turned out to be true, I wouldn’t even be surprised. Somehow, she’s always seemed to understand English, including one day where our younger cat (we’ll come back to him soon!) went missing and didn’t come home for dinner, and I jokingly asked Luci if she knew where he’d gone, only for her to wander off and come back ten minutes later chasing him into the house.

She also understands time – and not just in the normal way where cats know it’s the time of day they normally get fed, but to the extent that I can tell her “come back in seven minutes” and she will walk away and be back in exactly seven minutes, without fail. One day, she had been yelling at me because she was hungry, and I told her it wasn’t dinner time yet. She walked over to the clock on our wall, looked at it, waited the one minute remaining for it to tick over to five o’clock, then looked me dead in the eye as she yelled again. No one ever believes me when I tell them this!

My younger cat is Noctis, and he’s eight years old. His hobbies include tearing up cardboard with his teeth, making nests in anything you leave within reach, and begging for extra snacks.

In 2017, I saw a post on Facebook by our local SPCA branch, talking about a bunch of kittens that had been turned over to them for adoption. One of them looked exactly like a cat we’d had when I was a toddler, who had been my best friend for the few years of my life, before he passed away.

It took a bit of convincing, but I talked my parents into getting another cat, and went out to meet this kitten. Unfortunately, when I arrived, the kitten in question had already found a new home. They told me they had plenty of other kittens, if I wanted to take a look, so I walked through their adoption room to see if anyone stood out to me. Most of the kittens were sleeping at the time, but Noctis saw me come in and walked up to the door of his enclosure to investigate, just staring at me through the glass door. I was talking to him through the glass when one of the staff saw, and she came over to ask if I wanted to hold him. She opened up the door, which was about waist height on me, and Noctis immediately turned sideways and just flopped against me, so I couldn’t move without him falling over. At this point, just like with Luci, I knew I had to take him home with me.

The SPCA had a bunch of little knitted mice that had been made and donated by someone local, and the cats were supposed to have one each in their enclosures to play with, plus there were a few spares in a little communal play area. When they took Noctis out, they reached for his mouse to bring home with him, only to find two more of them hidden away in his bed – somehow, at some point, he’d managed to squirrel away extra toys for himself. They gave him all three to bring home

For the first few days, we tried to keep the two cats separate, to let them get used to each other’s smells without any fighting happening. Our cats weren’t having it, though; they spent all their time sniffing at each other under the door and trying to get in (Luci) or out (Noctis) of the room we had been keeping Noctis in. Eventually we had to cave and let them meet earlier than anticipated. Luci wasn’t a fan of him, she did a bit of hissing and growling, but she was surprisingly patient with him, too. It was coming into winter at the time, and Noctis would continually sneak closer to her to cuddle up with her for warmth, and despite a few complaints, she always let him get away with it. He also had a habit of trying to steal a toy meerkat I’d brought home from a trip to Australia, and she would frequently tell him off when he tried to take it, batting it out of his mouth with her paw.

Unlike Luci, Noctis is not a lap-cat. His version of being affectionate is to sit beside you, with a respectful distance in between, and wait for you to scratch his ears. Sometimes, he also asks for hugs, getting up on a high surface and leaning on you just like he did to me that first day, so that you’ll wrap your arms around him. God forbid you try to pick him up, though, because he’ll squirm and wiggle his way free immediately.

Growing up, we had a lot of other pets in our household too – birds, mice, fish, a dog – but the cats have always been my favourite. There’s just nothing else in the world quite like sitting on the couch with a cat in your lap, purring at you for as long as you can let them stay.

I'd love to hear all about your pets, too. Feel free to book in a chat session with me to talk about whatever you want! For the last few days of June, you can even get 10% off using my RainySeason Coupon!