The Orange Cat Who Wasn’t by Charlotte Padfield

When I was seven, I went for a car ride in our 4-Runner with my mom and my six-year-old brother Rex that I still slightly remember. I’m seventeen so it happened ten years ago, but that ride is one of those memories I like to think about because it’s still a special day for me. It’s the day I found Fiona.

Mom had given us old towels before we left the house so that we could hold “them” in our laps. “Them” meant our new kittens. Mom had found “them” through someone at church whose cat had a litter. When I was seven, cats were completely foreign creatures to me. We had one cat before, but we never interacted because she lived in our barn. Mom had gotten her in 1987 and had to put her down in early 2004 because she was both deaf and blind, and coyotes surrounded our farm.

But ten years ago, spring breeze wafting through the open windows in our car, I was about to get my own cat. My criteria: an orange and white-striped cat. Orange was my favorite color. I refused to settle for any boring plain brown and black-striped cat. I hadn’t come up with a name yet, but I wasn’t too worried. Besides, we were going to see Shrek 2 that night, so I had plenty of time to commit to a name. My eyes flitted from home to home in the middle-class neighborhood, and finally settled on the house with a sign that advertised: FREE KITTENS!

Rex and I left our towels in the car, and an old man that limped took us into his garage. There, we saw a litter of five kittens. My eye instantly snagged an orange and white-striped one, just like I wanted.

 “I really like that one.” I said.

 “Well,” the man said, hesitating. “That’s the one my granddaughter wants.”

What? If his stupid granddaughter wanted it, then she should’ve taken it, I thought. I was heartbroken and resorted to what every seven- year- old who read too many books and thought they had some sort of intuition resorted to: I sat on the concrete floor and waited.

The first cat that comes up to me is the cat I’m going to get. It took some time; the lawnmower apparently looked much more appealing than I did to a group of playful kittens, but eventually one approached me. I was ecstatic, but then I noticed the brown and black stripes, exactly like the cat I didn’t want. For some reason, I didn’t care. This plain, striped kitten and I had a special connection. I was sure of it. I gently picked her up, like Mom had taught me.

“What about this one?” I mentally crossed my fingers.

“Yeah, you can have that one,” he said.

Once Rex had picked out his cat, grey and white-striped, we walked back to the car, wrapped them in the towels, and took them to our corn, soybean, and tobacco farm in Robertson County, Tennessee.

We all gathered in the living room, Dad, Mom, Rex and I. The kittens roamed around our living room, creeping behind our TV stand and exploring the plants we kept by a wall of windows. They used the litter box perfectly, even though they hilariously struggled to jump over the tall plastic sides. I asked my mom if we could figure out their genders. If we were going to name them, then we had to know if they were male or female.

Mom printed out information from the computer and instructed us to gently hold up their tails. For the girl, the “pee hole” and the “butt hole” were close together, for the boy, they were farther apart. Rex and I easily concluded that both of our cats were girls. As Rex and I wondered about potential names, Mom and Dad said it was time for Shrek 2.

I enjoyed the sequel about the giant green ogre almost as much as the first. I admired Fiona’s toughness. An ogre princess, she was both feminine and rough around the edges. As a kid I was a huge fan of girl characters in books and movies that wore pretty dresses but were also strong. Watching Fiona, I realized I had picked a name for my kitten.

As soon as we got home, I declared, “I’m naming her Fiona!”

Rex decided to name his cat Shrek, completely disregarding the little grey cat’s gender.

Fiona and Shrek were mostly outside cats. Unfortunately, a few months after they arrived at the farm Shrek disappeared for a really long time, long enough that we had given up hope of her return. But then on Dad’s birthday, we got a knock on our door. Our neighbor had found Shrek. After a second of staring at the cat in our neighbor’s arms, it was easy to determine that it wasn’t Shrek at all. We all knew it, but decided to keep her anyway, and named her Paris (Taking after Paris Hilton, we watched ‘The Simple Life’ religiously.)  Just like Shrek, Paris disappeared a few months after we got her. My family wondered if it had been a snake or coyote, but I didn’t want to think about it.

Four years later we moved from the farm to Springfield, and that was a huge adjustment for both Fiona and me. Neither of us had ever lived close to other people before. At our old house there was a highway about an acre away that rarely got traffic. Now, busy streets were everywhere. At our old house we didn’t encounter any other domesticated animals. Now, we lived in a place with neighbors that had other pets in their yards. And what worried me the most: If Fiona roamed, she would never find her way back home. She would disappear like Shrek and Paris. For these reasons, I tried to keep Fiona in the house as long as I could.

Eventually, Mom persuaded me to let her out. Mom explained that she was an outside cat and keeping her inside was unfair. I finally decided to let her out before catching the bus for the first time at my new house, hoping that it would be some special moment. I unlocked the garage door, set Fiona in the grass. She took off running and my heart sank.

When I got home from school, she wasn’t back yet.

Not the next day.

Not even the next day.

On the fourth day, ready to start posting pictures around the neighborhood, I confronted my mom, willing to use any means necessary to enlist her help.

“Look out the kitchen window,” she said.

Fiona was lounging peacefully on a wicker chair. She was home.

Now, Fiona is almost ten- years- old. She sleeps in my bed every night and will meow when I move too much. Her favorite treat is string cheese. She goes absolutely crazy if she sees someone in the house eating it. Even though she has gotten older and sleeps most of the time, she still plays once in awhile. She loves ‘The Cat App.’. And I love watching her swat at fluttering birds on a screen.

I’m going to Western Kentucky University in August and am going to miss not being able to spend time with Fiona everyday. But I have plans; as soon as I get my own apartment, I’m snatching her away from Mom. I’m so glad Fiona is in my life, and I know without a doubt that I’d choose her over any other cat any day, even one with orange and white stripes.