Chapter 19
Benji
I’d known it was coming. Peter had been updating the whiteboard with adoption milestones for weeks, each entry written in the green marker that meant “scheduled event” and annotated with the precise, clinical shorthand of a man who had done this many times before and who understood that the logistics of letting go required the same organizational rigor as the logistics of holding on.
The photo shoot had worked.
Mia’s campaign had worked.
Within seventy-two hours of posting, every kitten had an approved application.
LaTavia was going to a retired couple in Seminole Heights who had lost their cat the previous year and had been waiting for the right match.
Kelly was going to a family with two kids who had driven to the clinic specifically because their daughter had seen the photo of Kelly on Peter’s shoulder and had declared, with the unshakable certainty of a child who had found her destiny, that this was her cat.
Solange was going to a veterinary student who had written a two-page essay that Peter described as “thorough.” I suspected it had made him emotional, though he would deny this under oath.
LeToya, the biter, was going to a woman who ran a cat café in St. Pete.
She had specifically requested “your most aggressive kitten” because she needed a cat with enough personality to anchor the café’s social media presence.
And then there was Beyoncé.
Beyoncé was going to a family in South Tampa with a large house and a fenced yard and two other cats.
I was fine with it.
I was completely, totally, absolutely fine with it.
“You’re not fine with it,” Peter said on the morning of the adoption day, watching me sit on the bathroom floor surrounded by kittens who didn’t know that today was the last time they’d swarm over my legs and bite my shoelaces and climb my shirt while I tried to give them their morning formula.
“I’m fine, Peter. I’m a grown adult who understands how foster care works. The whole point is that they go to good homes. That’s the goal. I’ve been working toward this goal. This is a success.”
“You’ve been in the bathroom for forty-five minutes.”
“I’m doing the final feeding. Final feedings take time. You can’t rush a final feeding.”
“You’ve been doing the final feeding for forty-five minutes, and I can hear you narrating their life stories through the door.”
Fine.
That was accurate.
I had, during the final feeding, delivered a comprehensive biographical monologue to each kitten, covering their personality traits, their greatest achievements, their most memorable escape attempts, and my personal hopes for their futures.
LaTavia had received a speech about inner peace.
Kelly had received a speech about finding people who would let you sleep on their shoulders.
Solange had received a speech about the power of watching and waiting.
LeToya had received a speech about never apologizing for her teeth.
Beyoncé had received a speech that I was not going to describe because it involved my voice cracking twice and a level of emotional specificity that I was not prepared to discuss with anyone, including the cat it had been directed at.
“I’m coming out,” I said.
“Take your time.”
“I said I’m coming out.”
“And yet the door remains closed.”
I opened the door to find Peter leaning against the hallway wall.
His arms were crossed. He wore his weekend uniform of a faded T-shirt and jeans, his glasses slightly crooked, his face arranged in an expression that was trying to be neutral but that contained, in the precise set of his mouth and the way his eyes moved across my face, something that looked uncomfortably like understanding.
“She’s going to a good home,” he said.
“I know.”
“Two other cats won the big yard lottery. The family has experience with high-energy animals.”
“I know.”
“You named them after Destiny’s Child.” He tried to smirk at that—and looked like he’d just sucked a lemon dry.
“I’m aware of what I did, Peter.”
“I told you not to name them.”
“And I ignored you, and it was the right call, because they had names in the adoption photos, and the names gave them personality, and the personality drove engagement, and the engagement produced applications. My naming strategy was a marketing decision.”
“Your naming strategy was emotional attachment disguised as marketing.”
“Same thing, Peter. All good marketing is emotional attachment. Mia taught me that.”
He grunted. “Mia teaches you a lot of things that are convenient for your argument.”
I stared at him.
He stared at me.
Beyoncé, who was sitting on my foot with the proprietary confidence of a kitten who had claimed that particular patch of human as her territory months ago, looked at both of us and mewed once.
It was a sound that contained no discernible meaning but that I interpreted, because I had been interpreting this cat’s sounds for two months and was fluent in her language, as, “I know what’s happening, and I’m handling it better than you are. ”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“You said that.”
“I’m saying it again for emphasis.”
Peter uncrossed his arms, reached down, and picked up Beyoncé with one hand.
She went limp in his grip with the instant, total surrender that she reserved exclusively for Peter.
It was a bonelessness so complete that she looked like a calico dishrag.
He held her at eye level and studied her the way he studied all his fosters before they left, with a clinical attention that was also, if you knew how to look, a form of farewell.
“She’s a good cat.” He said it to me, but also to her. “She’s going to give that family a run for their money.”
“She’s going to escape from every room in their house within the first week.”
“Probably.”
“She’s going to terrorize their other cats.”
“Most certainly.”
“She’s going to be magnificent.”
Peter set Beyoncé on his shoulder. She draped herself across his collarbone and purred with the satisfied rumble of a creature who had conquered every territory available to her and was resting on the summit.
He looked at me, and for a moment, his face did the thing it had done during the photo shoot. It was a softening, a lowering of something he usually kept raised, a brief visibility of a person who felt things deeply and had gotten very good at pretending he didn’t.
“They all are,” he said.
The adopters came between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., staggered at intervals that Peter had scheduled with the precision of a military duty roster.
Each family arrived, completed their paperwork with Peter at the kitchen island, received a folder containing medical records and care instructions (Peter had prepared individual folders, because of course he had), and left with a kitten in a carrier and the slightly dazed expression of people whose lives had just changed in a way they were only beginning to understand.
I handled LaTavia well, kissing her tiny head and telling the retired couple that she liked to be held on her back like a baby, which they received with the delighted seriousness of new grandparents absorbing critical intelligence.
I handled Kelly well, placing her in the carrier while telling the family’s daughter that Kelly’s favorite spot was the crook of a neck, and that if she sat very still at bedtime, Kelly would climb up and fall asleep against her ear and purr her to sleep.
The little girl nodded with the grave commitment of a child accepting a sacred responsibility.
I handled Solange well, shaking the veterinary student’s hand and telling her that Solange didn’t show affection in obvious ways, but that she showed it by watching, by choosing to be in the same room as you, by the slow blink that meant trust in cat language.
I told her that, if she was patient enough to wait for Solange to come to her, the reward would be a loyalty so quiet and so absolute that she’d wonder how she’d ever lived without it.
I handled LeToya well, handing her to the cat café woman while LeToya bit the carrier strap. The woman laughed and said, “Oh, she’s perfect,” and I’d said, “She really is,” and meant it.
Then Beyoncé’s family arrived.
I did not handle it well.
They were a lovely couple in their thirties with kind faces and a minivan and two cat carriers already in the back seat for their existing cats.
They were named Bowie and Freddie, which I respected as a naming convention, and which Beyoncé would either honor or overthrow, depending on whether she recognized the authority of cats who had arrived before her.
Peter handled the paperwork.
I was supposed to be handling the handoff, which involved placing Beyoncé in their carrier and providing the same kind of personalized care briefing I’d given the other families.
I’d prepared notes.
I’d practiced the speech in the shower that morning, running through Beyoncé’s traits and preferences and quirks with the professional detachment of a foster parent who understood that this was the goal and that the goal was good.
I picked Beyoncé up from the floor, where she’d been sitting on Peter’s shoe, and held her against my chest. She was warm and small and vibrating with her usual low-frequency purr.
She looked up at me with those green eyes that had been the first thing I’d seen on more mornings than I could count, peering at me from impossible locations, the top of the door, the inside of my shoe, the crook of Peter’s neck, and every surface in this apartment that could be climbed, conquered, or escaped from.
“So,” I said to the couple.
That’s when my voice was did a thing.
A specific thing.
A thing that I recognized from the few times in my life when my body had decided to feel something that my brain had not authorized and that my voice was going to betray whether I liked it or not.
“So, this is Beyoncé, and she’s, um . . .”
I stopped.
Regrouped.
Tried again.