Three years a cat lady

**I wrote this on Layla's actual Gotcha Day with every intention of posting it as soon as I took our annual picture. Too bad I'm a horrible cat momma who A) didn't get around to taking the photo until the next day, and B) waited nearly three more days to finally pull it all together. I am so not digging being a social media deviant! Anyway, please imagine it's Tuesday, August 3 again as you read. I promise to have you back to your regularly scheduled weekend in just a couple of minutes.**

Three years ago today I made a split-second, very un-Sarah-like decision to adopt an a-DOR-a-ble kitten that I’d just discovered on PetFinder.com. She was tiny when I got her—just skin, bones, and tufts of fluffy black hair. She spent the first night at my house curled up on my pillow next to my head, and I spent my first night as a cat owner worried that I was going to roll over and squish her.

Our relationship during our first year together was tenuous at best—she hated being locked in a bedroom all day every day; I hated her for letting me know it (loudly) at 4 o’clock every morning. Once she got older, though, she stopped being such a menace we moved into a bigger space, so her devilish ways weren’t quite as bothersome.

Nowadays, she’s still prone to whining, to hurling herself halfway down a flight of stairs, to bouncing off walls, to knocking everything off my desk, and to jumping on the kitchen counter, but she’s also prone to running to the door when I come home from work, to checking on me while I’m on the dreadmill, to diving over my head when I’m doing Pilates, to begging for ham when I’m making my lunch, and to falling asleep in the crook of my knees every night at bedtime. She may be as programmed to be a pest as I am to be a female, but she’s my pest, and I can’t imagine life without her.

Happy Gotcha Day, Miss Layla Lou! May you always be just as nutters as you were the day we met. Now c’mon, let’s go eat some deli meat!