A Catty Adoption Center

I’m having a day out with my mom and aunt, and we go to a mall I haven’t been to before. My aunt is excited to show us the animal adoption center inside, so we walk in to look over the cats.

Almost immediately I find a small, sandy-colored kitten who looks exactly like my cat did when he was a kitten. Between already not being in a super good mood that day and still hurting from the loss of my lifelong pet — he was a year old when I was born and he lived to be 19 — I immediately start to cry as the kitten reaches for me through the cage bars.

Seeing me cry and repeat, “He looks just like [My Cat],” as I pet him through the cage, my mom and aunt immediately go to ask if we could see him. The employees, though acting friendly, are adamant about refusing, since, “he’s new [there],” but eventually they take him out to let me play with him for a bit. While I pet and let him crawl on my shoulders, my mom and aunt are talking with one of the girls about adopting when I am out of earshot.

The other girl sitting with me keeps getting more and more eager to take him back from me, and acting as though I am planning on drop-kicking him. She keeps up a constant repeating of, “Be careful!” until I hand him back myself. At this point I want to leave because I am embarrassed for crying, and the employees are all looking at me like I asked how long it takes to drive to the moon.

Later on, my mom apologizes and says she was planning on getting the cat, and even my aunt wanted to pay half the adoption fee because she felt so bad, but the one employee refused, saying he was not yet adoptable and that he would be ready in about a week or two after he finished all of his checkups and vaccinations. She says it had to be done through them and only them for the whole cat’s life, which sounds sketchy to me.

Three days later, we’re having another outing with my aunt and my cousins, and my aunt shows us the center’s social media page. They have adopted out the same kitten they refused us to someone else and posted it on their wall, mentioning how amazing it is that he found his forever home so quickly. I don’t know if they lied about him being on hold — which we would’ve understood — or they confused being completely heartbroken with emotional instability and judged me based on that assumption.