I’ve been at the front desk for only thirty seconds when Diego walks in, takes one look at me, and says, “Dang, Joey, what the hell happened?”
“I look that bad, huh?”
“You just look like you could use some cheering up.”
“I’m fine.”
Diego takes the seat next to me, shaking his head. “Don’t even try to play me. You’re not a good liar.”
“I think I’m going to put my two weeks in,” I finally admit.
“Damn, okay. That bad?”
We continue our shift as normal. Hours later, I go to clean the cats’ water bowls.
I stop in front of a particularly friendly new kitten, a gray tabby who presses himself right up to the bars of his cage and stares up at me with light-green eyes. He opens his mouth just a bit in what might be a silent meow, and I put my hand through the bars and scratch his head.
I switch out his water and start to walk away, nearly missing the sign ofanotherlife inside the cage. But then the light hits in just the right way, and I nearly do a double take.
Ruthie?
The tiny ball of black, gray, and orange fluff hisses at me the moment she notices my attention on her, eyes narrowed with mistrust. My adrenaline is pumping, but I tell myself not to get my hopes up. It might not be Ruthie, I remind myself. It’s 2013, and her bio distinctly said she was brought to the shelter in 2012.
But she’s unmistakable, even as a kitten—and sheisa kitten. Probably a few months old; she couldn’t possibly weigh more than three or four pounds. A far cry from the eleven-pound girl I once adopted, and yet…
There’s the tabbyMon her forehead, a rare presence on a tortoiseshell cat. And I’m still unsure she evenisa tortoiseshell. I mean, yes, she has black and orange, but she also has some gray and peach patches, all of which make her look more brown than anything unless she’s in direct sunlight. On multiple occasions, people asked me if she was a Maine coon, and I had to inform them that, according to her bio—and the DNA test I spent way too much money on—she was just a regular domestic longhair.
Then there’s her tiny head—so much tinier than it ever was in the time I knew her—with long, pointed ears, even more disproportionate at this age. Her fur isn’t too long, and it’s a bit wiry in the way that kitten fur often is, but the tail that’s curled protectively around her body is fluffy and black at the end.
And those eyes. Gold, with a green ring in the center.
This is Ruthie.
It has to be.
“Oh, you met Penguin and Tuna,” Diego says. I jump at his sudden presence and rush to wipe away the tears welling in my eyes. “That’s what we’re calling them—one of the volunteers named ’em, and I was like, ‘You sure you don’t want to save the name Penguin for a tuxedo cat?’ and she was just like, ‘Nope.’?”
“When did they come in?” I ask, my voice a little breathless as I stare at Ruthie, who is blinking at me with those wide, knowing eyes. And I know it’s ridiculous, but I couldswearshe recognizes me the same way I recognize her.
Diego thinks her name is Tuna. I want to snort. What kind of name is that?
“New Year’s Eve. They were our last intake of the year,” he says, sidling up to me. Ruthie lets out another long, deep hiss. “Two siblings found in a dumpster by the beach.”
A dumpster?
“Why are they in the same cage?” I ask. Cats are never put in the same cage unless they’re really young kittens from the same litter. These two are too old for that.
“Oh, they’re bonded as all get-out. We tried separating them, but they would not have it. Tuna in particular—she’s a feisty one. She lost her voice the first day here from meowing at the top of her lungs.”
“Shelost her voice?” I repeat, outraged on behalf of my cat.
“Yeah, she just yowled and yowled constantly the moment she got here. I don’t think she likes being caged up too much. Then we put him in the cage with her, and she calmed down. Started purring all loud.”
As if she’s imploring me to do something, Ruthie lets out the most pitiful excuse for a meow I’ve ever heard; it’s more of a rasp than anything.
I look up, and my eyes land on Penguin. Penguin, who apparently is such a calming presence that she stops yowling when they’re together. I feel my eyes tear up at the thought of this sibling who was taken away from her. What happened to him? At what point were they separated? Ruthie’s rescue biography didn’t mention Penguin.
“Are they a package deal, then? If someone wants to adopt one of them, they have to adopt the other?” I ask.
