“You have to open yourself up to new experiences. If you keep focusing on your past life, you’re only inviting disappointment. You’re here for many reasons—oneof which is to find the happiness that eluded you in your first life.” A pointed dig at Kimiko, like she just can’t help herself. “When I first got here, all I could think about was keeping my husband safe. I had spared Hank from an untimely death, but I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. I imagined I was in that movieFinal Destination, and death was waiting to loop back around and get him.
“And then one day I remembered Ernest, the golden retriever who found me in the wake of losing Hank. Rescued me, really. I saw him running wild at a busy intersection. Brought him to a shelter. He didn’t have a microchip, so I kept him, and he changed my life.
“But in this life, the day I found him had come and gone. I was too late. I stalked that intersection for weeks, feeling like I’d lost a part of myself I had forgotten I had; I’d been too overjoyed at having my husband back. I mourned Ernest and, finally, stopped visiting that intersection. I adopted another dog, Joyce.
“Then, a month after adopting Joyce, I passed through that same intersection. Just going about my day, not even thinking about Ernest. But there he was. Sitting on the corner, staring straight at my car. As if he’d been waiting.
“Joyce and Ernest became best friends, and I was so incredibly lucky to have both of them in my life for over a decade. But it never could have happened if I hadn’t surrendered myself to the whims of this second life. So that’s my advice: Stop trying to orchestrate your life to fit the mold you have in mind, and things will fall into place.”
Even though her words aren’t actually helpful—they’re pretty insensitive, actually, the more I think about it; it’s like she’s saying,You have to open yourself up to your friend dying again, and then, hey, maybe she won’t, second lives are funny that way—they do linger in my mind for the rest of the meeting, right through the moment I leave after exchanging phone numbers with a couple of the other attendees. I think about what she said as I chase Kimiko out the door, hoping to get some sort of explanation about the hostility of the meeting, but I find myself in an empty parking lot, Kimiko nowhere in sight.
I continue to think about it for days, not nonstop or anything, just percolating in the back of my mind. Processing.
A few days later, it hits me:
I’ve got to see a man about a cat.
16
I hurry into the West Los Angeles Animal Shelter, a woman on a mission. I don’t know much about Ruthie’s life before I adopted her in 2020, but the rescue I adopted her from had a few key details in her bio. They knew she was born sometime in 2012—this year—and that she was brought to the West Los Angeles Animal Shelter as a kitten after someone found her roaming the streets of Venice. She stayed at the shelter until it wasnearlytoo late, when the no-kill rescue saved her from euthanasia in the nick of time.
She never found a forever home; she was adopted once, kept for a year, then surrendered back to the rescue. She bounced around foster homes, growing increasingly antisocial—that part wasn’t in her bio, just quietly admitted to me when I adopted her—until she found me.
But I can change her story. Maybe.
I hope.
I mean, okay, if I’m honest, chances are slim. It’s October, so she might have already been brought to the rescue and adopted by her awful first owners, the ones who had the nerve to return her like she was nothing more than a poorly fitting article of clothing.
I take a deep breath and remind myself that I don’t know the full story. There are valid reasons for people to return a pet to an animal rescue, I’m sure. Even if they’ve had that pet for a whole year. Maybe the owners had a baby with severe allergies. Maybe Ruthieattackedtheir baby.
Honestly, that sounds like a very Ruthie thing to do.
I tried the rescue first. After scouring their website photos without glimpsing Ruthie, I called, described her, and asked if they’d had a cat like that come through in the past ten months. The person I spoke to wasn’t helpful, but after much hassling, she promised to look through their records.
Unable to sit idly by while Ruthie could be locked in a cage somewhere, I left my dorm the moment I got off the phone and drove to the shelter.
I want my cat back.
I’ve never been to the West Los Angeles Animal Shelter before. I’m saddened to see where Ruthie spent the second chapter of her life, after her first chapter on the wild streets of Los Angeles.
It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the shelter. There isn’t. It’s nice. It’s clean. But the moment I step out of my car, I’m greeted by a cacophony of dozens of dogs barking and yapping at the top of their little doggy lungs. Deep barks, high-pitched yelps, a growl or two.
Ruthiehatesdogs.
The one time Ruthie saw a dog in my apartment—when a coworker brought over her tiny little terrier mutt—Ruthie had hissed at him, run away, and subsequently spent the entire evening cowering under my bed, refusing to come out until hours after they’d left.
I wonder if this is where that fear started.
A young Latino man, probably somewhere in his twenties, sits behind the welcome desk and offers me a wide grin.
“Welcome to the West Lost Angeles Animal Shelter. I’m Diego. Are you here to adopt?”
I nod once, firmly. Then, I reconsider. I don’t want him to get his hopes up and try to give me a cat who isn’t Ruthie—even though the moral of Marie’s story last night was that Ishouldbe open to another cat.
“Maybe. I’d like to look at the cats, please.”
A few minutes later, Diego leads me through the cat portion of the shelter, which is separated from the dog section. I carefully walk past the cages, eyeing every cat, even the ones I know at a glance are most certainlynotRuthie. Many of them seem dejected, hunched over in the back corners of their cages, but some come and press against the front bars, begging for attention.
