I’d named them anyway, and now we were both attached, and in two weeks they were going to homes that weren’t ours.
I filed that away.
Today was not the day for that.
Today was the day for tiny bow ties and golden light.
“Bring in Kelly,” I said.
Kelly was the cuddler. The cuddler’s primary interest during the photo shoot was not being photographed but rather climbing onto the nearest human and falling asleep.
I placed her on the faux fur.
She immediately stood up, walked off the faux fur, climbed Peter’s leg, scaled his torso, and settled into the crook of his neck. She began purring at a volume that suggested she had mistaken his body fora heated bed and intended to stay.
“Kelly,” Peter said.
Kelly purred harder.
“Kelly, I need you on the fur.”
Kelly closed her eyes and bonded more aggressively with his neck.
“This is going to be a problem,” Peter said.
“No, this is going to be thebest photo ever,” Mia said.
She was right.
What she captured in the next thirty seconds was Peter Loupier standing in a column of morning light with a kitten asleep on his shoulder and his face doing the thing it did when an animal chose him.
“Delete that,” Peter said.
“Absolutely not,” Mia said.
“That’s not an adoption photo. That’s a photo of me.”
“That’s a photo of a kitten on a person who loves her. It’s going to make someone cry in the best possible way. You can fight me on this, but youwilllose.”
Peter looked at me for support.
I raised both hands in a gesture of neutrality that was not neutral at all.
“She’s the creative director,” I said. “Besides, I’m scared of her.”
“You’reboththe problem,” Peter said, though hedidn’t take Kelly off his shoulder, and when Mia took six more shots, he didn’t turn away from the camera.
Solange was next.
She was the watcher, the kitten who sat at the back of every group and observed with the quiet, unblinking attention of a creature who was cataloguing everything and sharing nothing. She was the General Tso of the litter, and I respected her enormously.
She sat on the faux fur and stared directly into the camera lens with an intensity that made Mia actually lean back.
“She’s looking into my soul,” Mia said.
“She does that,” Peter said. “She did it to Carlos last week, and he had to leave the room.”
“She’sperfect. Don’t move her. Don’t move anything. This is giving main character vibes, big time.”
