Feeling: evil
Listening to: nothing
Reading/Watching: A Spell for Chameleon, Piers Anthony

Last night, I was awakened by mon coeur, standing in the bedroom with a brown tiger-striped cat in his arms.

"Is there a place where we can keep a cat?" he asked.

In case anyone doesn't know, I am allergic to cats. Very, very badly allergic, in the sense that I start wheezing, sneezing, my eyes itch and water, and I eventually have an asthma attack if I'm around them for too long. It's one of the greater tragedies in my life, because honestly, I love cats. But my immune system really, really doesn't.

So of course, my initial inclination, after seeing a little lump of fur peering at me from mon coeur's arms, is to hold out my arms and squeal, "ooh, lemme see the kittyyyy!"

This is immediately followed by the practical side of my brain, which has just woken up finally, and loudly declares (through my mouth), "What are you doing? We can't have a cat in here. We have no food, no litter box, we have no idea if it's a stray or belongs to someone, and if we keep it we could be abducting a pet. Plus, did you remember that cats tend to give me a problem with breathing?"

He cradled the (silent) cat in his arms, both of them still looking hopefully at me, and said "He's been meowing outside for the past forty minutes. I think his owners left him out on accident, and they're not opening their door, and it's cold outside, so he was freezing. Couldn't we just keep him for a couple hours, until the neighbors wake up?"

But he didn't have a collar, and there was no proof that he belonged to the neighbors, except that he was meowing and pawing at their door at 4 in the morning. So I repeated that we had no litter box, that he might not even be housetrained, and insisted that the cat needed to be put back outside for his owners to find.

"But couldn't we just keep him in the storage shed or something?" I love that mon coeur is the type of guy to rescue a cat from the cold, especially since he began petting him and trying to warm him up as soon as the cat jumped into his arms. He's a very softhearted guy, and I adore that about him, but at the same time, it was four a.m. I was tired.

So I snippily refused, and went back to bed, and mon coeur put the cat back outside, feeling like a monster.

This morning, while eating breakfast, I looked through the blinds to the patio, and Mr. Tiger Stripes is sitting on our doormat, looking at me hopefully, with big, bright green eyes. And my heart puddled. But I closed the blinds and ignored him, because I don't enjoy anaphylactic shock.

Whatever magical power kept the cat silent when he was inside was apparently no longer in effect, because kitty stayed on our porch, meowing off and on all day long (usually with a dependable every-37-seconds frequency), stretching to put his paws on the glass and give us pleading looks cute enough to make us all want to cry. At dinner, Nimsay was cooing at him through the window, asking where he'd come from.

I explained that we had apparently been adopted. He'd sniffed the gravy train, and wasn't budging. And now, everyone in the apartment wants to keep the cat. Including me. Except my desire to breathe is greater than my desire for cute furry kittyness, so I am now the monster who is denying Mr. Tiger Stripes a home.

Anyone want a cat?

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