I know I’m not alone when I say this.

Even as I write this, I’m mentally running a checklist on all of my friends who have cats and the text messages they send me about their cats. 

My mom texts me pictures and updates of her cat Inky like she’s reporting live on location – where she is sleeping now, where she slept last night, what she is sitting on now (seriously, it’s hysterical).  

I’m sooo equally guilty of this! Let me break down my own idiosyncrasies for you.

For the purpose of our current discussion, I’ll focus on Miss Letty, our almost 3 year old Tortoiseshell House Queen.

Prior to this, I could delve into decades of obsessive behavior over my Rugby and Guinness back when they were still alive – but that gets super “crazy cat lady” so I’ll save those stories for another day…

Letty weighs all of 8 pounds and is only slightly larger than a regulation size NFL football if it had legs. She’s super vocal – as most tortoiseshell gals are – and has a full range of beeps and squeaks that communicate her current desires, mood, and concerns. Full meows are reserved specifically for “DO NOT LIKE” situations (such as car rides to the vet). 

Here’s a day in the life of my relationship with Letty.

She wakes me up in the morning by landing on my chest like she literally dropped out of the sky (spook jumps). I then stare at her and tell her how beautiful she is. She’s generally feisty AF in the morning and has zero receptivity of my praise and so we head downstairs for breakfast. 

Will she eat? Maybe… depends on her mood so I end up following her around the house with her food bowl (she has two different food bowls) until she decides where she would like to eat. She eventually will lead me back up stairs where she will announce that she would like running water from the tub faucet, to which I immediately oblige.

Now it’s time for me to get to work, but, of course, as soon as I’m seated in my office she’s in my lap purring. If I’m trying to type on my keyboard she will quickly transition to either walking on said keyboard or seating herself between my face and my computer screen. If I’m on a skype call she will walk in front of the camera – because whoever I’m talking to must surely be made aware of her presence, right?

Eventually Andrew will come upstairs to get dressed for whatever he’s up to, so Miss Letty must then transition to jumping up onto his shoulders like a little spider monkey. Once she decides she’s in the mood for a nap, each of us is released to go about doing the things that are required to keep her kingdom in order.

In the evenings there are more requirements to provide her running faucet water on demand, lap space during dinner, and at lights-out she burrows herself under the covers and punches her tiny little paw pads into whatever portion of my body is most convenient to her and she stays like this ALL NIGHT. It’s my responsibility to wake up and move myself AROUND HER.

I recently purchased her a set of crystals. Yep… I bought my cat crystals (she loves them, for real). How many hours have I spent staring at her and talking to her? I’d seriously be terrified to count them.

So the point I’m trying to get at here is more than just telling you I’ve lost my marbles. Rather, how great is it that we can love another creature so much that we willingly sacrifice our wants/needs to make it happy? That we can have such a connection with a cat (or cats, or cats and dogs, or birds, whatever) that we brag about him/her like a child, confide our secrets to, and seek out first when we’ve had a not-so-great day.

We never anticipated adopting Letty. We had three cats at the time – more than enough as most people would say. But the day she appeared in our lives, she immediately locked eyes with me in such a way that told me she knew something that I didn’t. And such is exactly what we strive to make possible at Cat & Craft simply by holding space and encouraging connections. 

Got your own crazy cat lady story to share? Send them on over, your stories are welcome here!