Chapter 16
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 Ruthie attacked their 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.
Ruthie hates dogs.
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 I should be 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 certainly not Ruthie.
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.
Diego offers an endless string of commentary, telling me their names and any personality quirks he’s noticed.
He tells me about the social ones and even has nice things to say about the most antisocial of them, seeming to genuinely believe that each of these cats will open up and become the perfect pet if they go to a kind, loving home.
I don’t know at what point I start crying, but Diego notices it before I do.
“Hey, it’s okay. I know it’s kind of overwhelming to see them all locked up in cages like this, but we get a lot of volunteers in to help socialize them, play with the ones who want to play. We do our best here, really.”
Between feeling sorry for Ruthie and feeling sorry for all these cats I never would have thought about had I not been so determined to find Ruthie, I’m sobbing. I grow embarrassed, my cheeks heating, as I realize I’m breaking down in front of this total stranger.
It’s a good cry, the kind where I let out all my pent-up emotions. The kind that would have left me feeling relieved afterward if I weren’t in a public space and if it felt like there would be an afterward. I keep crying and crying, and Diego stands next to me, quiet.
Once the tears finally ebb, I spare Diego a glance. He stares straight ahead at one of the cats, a small orange tabby, his fingers scratching the tabby’s neck through the bars. Giving me the closest thing to privacy he can under the circumstances.
I realize this is the first time I’ve cried in a while—since the night I died, probably—and the way I cried really shows that. Even though my tears have stopped flowing, I feel like they’re still right there, waiting to come to the surface at a moment’s notice.
I clear my throat and mutter an apology, unable to look him in the eye. How am I supposed to get through the rest of this interaction? I focus on the cats, trying to rush through seeing them. I start to doubt I’ll have any luck.
Maybe coming here wasn’t a good idea.
“I get it,” Diego says. “That’s why I work here.
It’s sad, all these animals without a home, and I’d adopt them all if I could, but I figure working here and trying to make their lives better, getting them to the right families—that’s good enough for me.
Have any of these fur balls caught your interest? ”
We reach the end of the row of cages, and Ruthie is nowhere to be found. My tears have mostly dried, so I take a deep breath and push forward with my real reason for coming here.
Finally looking him in the eye and trying not to think too hard about what he must see—I’m an ugly crier, always have been—I’m struck by the thought that Diego is a really good guy, caring so much about these cats.
And probably one of the few people I’ve met who seems to have found a job that he loves, one that’s rewarding and where he makes an actual difference.
I’m glad he was probably one of the first people Ruthie met. Or will be, depending on the timeline of things. Which brings me to…
“You haven’t seen a tortoiseshell tabby cat come through here this year, have you? Long-haired, looks brown in some lighting. Could easily be mistaken for a Maine coon because of her coat but doesn’t have the grumpy-looking face or the tufted ears. Yellow eyes with a green ring around the pupil?”
“You lost your cat?” Diego asks, his voice full of sympathy.
I nod, then remember that Ruthie would have come in here at no more than a few months old, not yet vaccinated or spayed or any of those fun things that cats have to go through before they can be adopted, so I lie.
“Not my cat. I took in a stray kitten, but she got out a few days later, and now she’s all I can think about.
I know it’s silly, but… I really want to get her back. ”
I can tell by the look on Diego’s face that I’ve played this right. He doesn’t even blink at my lie about knowing Ruthie for only a few days, just warmly asks, “What was her name?”
“Ruthie.”
“Can you describe Ruthie to me again?”
I do, hope fluttering in my chest, but once I’m done, Diego shakes his head and says, “I haven’t seen a cat like that pass through here recently. How long ago did you lose her?”
Uh-oh. Okay, how to play this? “It’s been a while,” I start, which elicits the surprised reaction I expect it to.
I land on a lie that is both careful and a bit of a spiral.
“A few months, actually. I was living up in the Valley at the time, so I checked all the rescues and shelters up there. I know the odds of her getting all the way down here are slim, but—”
“Hey, you never know. Cats are impressive creatures.”
“I should probably give up, but I just wanted to check. You know?”
“I get it. Can’t say I blame you. I have three cats at home, and if any one of them got out, I’d tear this city to pieces searching.”
Diego walks me out with a promise to keep an eye out for a cat matching my description.
I’m almost through the door when I catch sight of a flyer. I turn back to Diego.
“You guys are hiring?”