So I was driving home from my less-than-satisfactory Japanese class when a squirrel flung itself in front of my car. I hit my breaks, and the squirrel hurried along, splatting on the fence outside the auto and technical school side of campus.
Without thinking, I flipped on my emergency lights—no one was behind me; it was late—then I hurried, the way a slow-motion part of your life almost demands you hurry, to the fence to see if the little fella was okay.
It was a kitten.
Not a squirrel—a meowing kitten.
I swooped the kitten up, he hissed at me, I hurried into my car, and we drove home.
I was halfway to my apartment before I realized I had a kitten in my lap.
Did I mention it was pouring rain?—this shivering little kitten felt more like a sponge than a mammal. The story has a happy ending, though. I brought him to the vet, cleaned him up, and taught him how to live with sass. Now his name is Davy Jones.
We don’t call DJ “Davy Jones” anymore, though; I only hear the echo of his original name when Philosopher Jones licks his head, and I remember, Oh yeah; I named him that because Philo adopted him. Because he was sopped with rain.
Instead, we call him DeeJAY.
When DeeJAY was still a kitten, he hid so well in my office, I was convinced he wriggled his way outside; so Chase and I spent all night wandering around the apartment complex. I slept with the living room door open, and my other cats locked in the bedroom and office, waiting for him to come in.
He didn’t reveal himself until Chase did about two hundred squats (over an all-nighter, if two hundred squats isn’t painful enough on its own); until I wept every spare fluid out of my body; until we were convinced we lost a kitten, and I dragged my defeated body to my computer to make the MISSING CAT posters.
Then DeeJAY wandered out from wherever bullshit place he’d hidden and curled into my lap. And this describes what it’s like to live with him in a nutshell.
