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“I’m just a cat lover who happens to have gone viral with a video.” I wink.
Her eyes go wide again. “I can’t believe that happened. And I saw the whole video that Brit Sheers posted. And you were right about the geese. It is like we’ve channeled all our meanness into that one animal.”
“I know! They’re ridiculously surly creatures, aren’t they?”
“They really are.” Annie nods her agreement and leads me down the hall.
She opens a door to a large room. It’s a cat’s playground paradise. There are cat trees spread throughout the room at various intervals, and stairs fixed to the walls leading to perches for cats to hang out on. Several kitties keep watch from the highest points in the room, guarding their territory. Other cats lounge in beds or zoom around the space, playing with toys or each other.
“This is incredible.” It’s exactly the kind of space I wanted to set up for the Kitty Whisperer in the future when I had my own house and could dedicate a space to my furry charges. Or when I had the capital to rent a space.
“It’s my favorite room. This is where our healthy cats who enjoy the companionship of both humans and furry friends hang out during the day. We have a smaller room for the more skittish ones, and the ones who need social training,” Annie tells me.
“This is perfect. Where do they sleep at night?”
“Come, I’ll show you.” Annie guides me down the hall to another room. This one has individual cages, but they’re not like little cells. Instead, they’re decorated with toys, and each one has a cat bed and a cat stuffie. “This is where we keep the kitties who sleep best on their own, but we have another room for communal sleeping.”
She takes me next door, where there are a few cats curled up together, enjoying naptime. A tabby puts his paw over his eyes and rolls away from us, obviously not interested in being disturbed.
“Do you foster feral families sometimes?”
“We do. We have special rooms for them as well.”
A woman peeks her head in. “I thought I might find you in here. I hope you’re enjoying your tour.”
“It’s great. Annie is a fantastic guide.”
The woman, who I recognize as the CEO of A Place for Paws, holds out a hand. “I’m Mary Jane. We spoke over email. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to meet with us.”
“It’s honestly a pleasure. This place is fabulous.”
She doesn’t take me to a boardroom; instead we grab coffees (with takeout cup lids to avoid drinking cat fur) and sit in the kitty playground, where she tells me all about the pilot project.
We both end up with cats in our laps as she talks about how her vision is to take what I’ve built with the Kitty Whisperer and make it a full-service program, with a vet on staff and feline care support available for the adoptive families.
“We don’t want to take you away from what you’ve already built, Kitty,” Mary Jane explains. “We’re hoping, if you’re interested, that we could merge your business model with ours. That way you can keep doing what you love, while helping us start up this new program.”
“This all sounds amazing. I’ll need a few weeks to get things organized with my staff, though.”
“You can take all the time you need. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but does this mean you’re coming on board?”
I don’t even have to think about it. I already know the answer. “I would love to be part of your team.”
Over the next few weeks, I find myself busier than I’ve ever been. I approach Fancy, my vet tech student, about taking a more managerial role in the Kitty Whisperer, which she’s more than happy to do. We agree that over the next two months my time will slowly shift from three days a week with the Kitty Whisperer down to two, and eventually down to one, where I’m just signing off on paperwork—we hire someone to take care of most of that—and reviewing client files. But I keep one day a week for visits, because my love of cats is the reason I started the Kitty Whisperer.
And as I transition, that’s what I find myself doing. I not only spend time with my feline friends, but I also help find them new homes, and I work with people who love animals with the same soft heart I do.
While I’m making big life changes, so is my mom. She ends up buying a smaller, two-bedroom house in the same development as Marie and sells the house I grew up in. Hattie and I help her pack. There’s catharsis in sorting through our history. And while we might shed some tears, there’s also laughter and love, and the knowledge that our memories stay with us. Home doesn’t have to be defined by a place, it’s where we find our strongest emotional bonds. It’s a shelter created from love.
