Persons Kitty: John

She purred in agreement.

John Persons knelt in the damp soil, ruining the knees of his two-hundred-dollar trousers. He did not hesitate. With trembling hands, he gently pried the plastic free. The kitty didn't run. She licked his thumb, her tiny tongue like a grain of sandpaper. john persons kitty

That was the sound that undid John Persons. She purred in agreement

He never called it by a name. To the world, it was simply "John Persons' kitty." A stray he’d found shivering behind his recycling bin three winters ago, a matted ball of orange fur with one torn ear and eyes the color of sour apple candy. He had intended to call animal control. Instead, he had opened a can of tuna. With trembling hands, he gently pried the plastic free

That night, he wrote a check to the local animal shelter for five hundred dollars. He ordered a plush cat bed from an online store (it was lavender, a color he had never before allowed into his home). And he finally gave the kitty a name.

The kitty, of course, did not care. It slept in the sunbeam on his "no cats on the furniture" couch. It knocked his carefully alphabetized DVD collection off the shelf. And at 6:17 every evening, without fail, it sat by the front door and let out a tiny, rusty mew .