Summer, apparently, is smack dab in the middle of kitten season. Something about the warm weather makes cats horny, they bone, and a bunch of little furry bastards start to appear soon after. It's a phenomenon that happens year after year and every single one of them, the local animal shelters get slammed by an influx of kittens.
Jennie had no way of knowing any of this until recently, because she doesn't like cats.
That's not to say she hates them-that'd be too strong of a word for it. Dislike, possibly. Apathy, perhaps. Or maybe just plain not a fan. She doesn't really know the exact term for her feelings on cats, but between their habit of scratching the shit out of everything, pissing everywhere, shedding like crazy, and general tendencies to be grade-A assholes, Jennie definitely doesn't love them.
Lisa does, though.
Lisa loves cats. Loves with a capital 'L', because she loves anything with four paws and fur and a cute little face. And Jennie capital 'L' Loves Lisa, so for some fucking reason, the first thing out of her mouth upon seeing Lisa walk in the door to their apartment with a crate full of kittens is not an immediate "What the fuck is that and get them out of our place," but instead a simple, firm, "No."
Because Jennie knows Lisa and, more importantly, she knows Lisa's big fat bleeding heart tendencies. Those big fat bleeding heart tendencies mean that the little pout that's going to make its way upon her girlfriend's face any moment now is going to be dangerously convincing, and Jennie cannot afford to let her resolve falter.
So when Lisa asks, "Would you at least let me explain before shooting me down?" her answer comes as easy as breathing.
"No. No cats. We agreed no pets."
"They won't be ours," Lisa protests, setting the crate down on the counter. (Jennie mentally makes a note to clean that spot later, because who knows what that crate has touched.) "They'd be fosters. It won't be permanent."
"No cats," Jennie repeats, digging her heels in. A small chorus of tiny meows protests that answer, but she doesn't care. They don't get a say in this argument. "I know you can find them somewhere else to stay."
"Not within 24 hours." Lisa pokes a finger through the metal bars of the cage door and smiles in a way that sends every alarm bell in Jennie's head ringing at once. "They've got nowhere else to go, Ni. The shelter is slammed right now and they really need foster homes."
"Great! In that case, I'm sure Jisoo would be happy to take them." That woman has had more cats in her house recently than the damn zoo, so she's fairly sure these guys would fit right in. "We're not keeping them."
"Jisoo's out of town."
Right. She forgot about that. "Rosé, then."
"She is too. They're attending that research conference together, remember?"
Right. She forgot about that too.
"We can't keep them."
"And we won't be. We'd just be giving them a home for a few weeks, until they're big enough to be spayed and neutered." Big, doe eyes turn their attention on her and Jennie suddenly feels her toes being dragged across the line she had drawn in the sand. "I'll keep them in the guest bedroom. You won't even know they're there."
"No."
"Jen," Lisa presses, and fuck, there's that pout she was worried about, "be reasonable."
"I am being reasonable. We agreed no pets." And Jennie does not like cats, so even then, if that deal were to be broken, it would be for a dog. A nice, trainable, friendly dog. Not a litter of goddamn kittens.
"They wouldn't be our pets. We'd be fostering them, and I'll do everything."
"Like finding them another home?"
"No."
"Lis-"
Lisa cuts her off with the most pathetic set of puppy eyes she's ever seen in her life and a, "Please, Ni."
Lisa is begging and Jennie is a weak, weak woman, but she needs to stay strong.
"I'll do everything," she repeats. "They won't ever leave the guest bedroom. You won't even know they're there and they'll be gone in a few weeks. I promise."
Jennie wants to say no.
Jennie should say no.
She looks at Lisa, sticks another toe across the line, and asks, "You promise they'll be gone in a few weeks?"
Her girlfriend smiles, big and bright and beautifully convincing. "I promise. They'll be gone in a few weeks."
"Fine."
Lisa's on her before she can even realize it, arms wrapping around her in a hug and lips making their way to pepper kisses across her face with repeated declarations of, "Thank you, thank you, thank you, I swear you won't regret this."
Jennie knows at least some of that isn't true (she's truthfully already regretting all of this), but she can't find it in herself to care right now.
-
The same cannot be said about the following morning.
Lisa's alarm goes off far too early for any sane human being and upon finishing her usual attempt to drown herself in her pillows, Jennie comes to the realization that it had gone off thirty minutes earlier than usual.
Thirty minutes of precious sleep, gone, just like that-and judging by the empty space currently filling Lisa's side of the bed, her girlfriend's apparently gone too. All in all, not the best way to start the day.
Luckily a good, balanced breakfast is the real start to any proper morning routine, so Jennie figures things will get better with some food. Bit by bit, she slips on a bra, an old T-shirt, and the first pair of joggers within reach. With high hopes and bleary eyes, Jennie makes the trek to the kitchen, only for the world to immediately take a big fat dump on her dreams of a good, easy morning.
The stench in the kitchen hits her in the face without warning.
It's pungent, visceral, akin to an unholy lovechild of a week-old bag of garbage and a tuna sandwich that was left in the sun for days. Lisa is seemingly unbothered, standing in front of the source of today's olfactory torture with a cup of coffee brewing nearby, happily scooping what Jennie can only describe as liquid shit onto a plate with one of the spoons they use for cereal. One of the spoons they eat off of. One of the spoons she eats off of.
Forget gagging, Jennie wants to throw up.
"Can you not do that in here?"
Lisa turns, arching an eyebrow as she asks, "Do what?"
A hand moves to wave vaguely toward the can of gateau de gato sitting dangerously close to the sink they use to clean shit. "That."
"I have to feed the cats, Jennie."
"Not with my cereal spoon you don't." It comes out a bit grumblier than she'd intended, but still, her point stands. Nothing that smells that bad should ever come in contact with anything she puts in her mouth.
"Oh." Lisa looks down at the spoon in her hands that she'd defiled. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize you'd care."
"Of course I'd care!" She does her best not to sneer in disgust at watching goop drip off one of her favorite spoons, but she's pretty sure she fails. "I eat off those."
"I'll wash your spoon, don't you worry." Her girlfriend snorts. "It's just cat food, it will come off."
"It won't come off of my memory. It smells like ass."
Making her way to the fridge, Jennie grabs a yogurt and proceeds to immediately evacuate the vicinity.
She can't hear it, but she swears she can practically feel Lisa laughing from the other room.
-
By day three of the kitten invasion, Jennie has gotten used to waking up thirty minutes earlier. She doesn't think she'll ever get used to the smell of that wet food, though. How exactly cats like eating something that smells like fermented porta-shitter juice, Jennie has no idea, but Lisa keeps feeding it to them, so they must like it.
She'd stopped using the cereal spoons, thankfully. If there's one thing Lisa is good at, it's knowing which boundaries not to push.
Most of the time, at least. She just won't give up on her silly little fantasy of getting Jennie to like these stupid kittens, though.
Jennie doesn't have anything against them, really, but she doesn't want them. Doesn't want to see them, doesn't want to hear them, doesn't want to interact with them. They're Lisa's problem, not hers. They're Lisa's kittens, not hers.
And yet when Lisa has a few meetings come up and needs to stay late, frantically calls Jennie, and begs her to feed them, what does she do? Oh, that's right-here she is, nearly fucking vomiting trying to get this stupid, goopy, gross wet food onto a plate, because as it turns out, this shit smells even worse up close.
Holding it as far away from her face as she can, Jennie opens the door to the guest room, places the plate down on the floor near the water bowl, and gets the fuck out as soon as possible.
On her way out, she catches sight of a little, teeny-tiny black cat making a mad dash for the wet food. Apparently he has better luck dealing with the smell.
-
Jennie ends up feeding the kittens twice that week, and once again early the following week.
The wet food still smells absolutely vile, but she'll admit that by feeding time number three, she's gotten a little curious. She knows from the pictures Lisa's shown her that there are four kittens; two black ones and two black-and-white ones, and their names are Eenie, Meenie, Minie, and Moe, respectively.
Lisa insists that they're easy to tell apart, but Jennie can hardly tell the difference between any of them.
Except for one.
Moe-the one that looks like he has a mustache-seems to like her. A lot. And to be honest, Jennie doesn't really know what to do with that.
This... little creature, barely more than a pound or two, isn't scared of her in the slightest. He nips at her fingers and curls up in her lap and pees almost exclusively where he's supposed to. He lets her clip his nails but screams bloody murder about it, runs after toys like a cheetah on a sugar high, and Jennie thinks that she might actually like cats a little bit.
Apparently, all the cats she had known had just been assholes.
-
She gets used to the wet food. She gets used to the cats. She gets used to the smells and the sounds and the constant pitter patter of little paws on hardwood, so when a few weeks come and go and it's finally the big day, Jennie isn't sure she's ready for them to leave.
Lisa doesn't seem ready either, truthfully. She'd spent an astronomical amount of time with those cats. She'd picked out colored collars for each of them, bought them absurd amounts of toys, and her eyes had lit up like stars every time she'd talk about them.
As she piles them all into the carrier, though, her eyes look dull. Sad. There's a smile on her face, but it's bittersweet.
They'd all known this day would come.
It'd been part of the deal, after all. It's how fostering kittens works; you keep 'em for a while, give em a place to grow and space to play, and give 'em back at the end.
Jennie's not sure she wants to give Moe back.
The night after they drop off the kittens for surgery, she has a talk with Lisa.
As it turns out, Lisa doesn't want to give Moe back either.
-
They end up adopting all four. Jennie had really only wanted the one, but she'll admit that the others grew on her too.
Eenie loves to be held. She'll hop up on your lap if given the opportunity and eat treats out of your hand like she's starving. She's not, but she's an excellent liar and always does her best to convince everyone she is. She'll often try to push her siblings out of the way to finish their food if they're too slow about finishing their own, but Minie is the only one who ever lets her get away with it.
Meenie is a bit more reserved overall, but no less affectionate. When she's in the mood for attention she usually prefers Lisa over Jennie and although Lisa will never admit it, Jennie is fairly sure that Meenie's her favorite. When a pet bed is added to Lisa's work from home office with an embroidered M on its side, Jennie doesn't say a word about it. (She does take plenty of pictures, though. More than one ends up pinned to the corkboard behind Lisa's desk.)
Minie, like her sister, is a bit skittish. Unlike her sister, however, she doesn't seem to have a preference for whose attention she wants. She likes sitting in the morning sun as it drifts in through the bedroom window, afternoon naps on the living room couch, and all in all is easily Jennie's second-favorite cat. (If she had to pick favorites, that is. Picking favorites would be wrong and mean and Moe is definitely not her favorite.)
Moe is the only boy of the bunch and Jennie doesn't want to say that he's a mommy's boy, but he kind of is. He's spoiled rotten, loves his attention, and is needy, whiny, and a complete and utter brat. She would die for him any day of the week, no questions asked.
Their bed is consistently covered in cat hair, they go through a ridiculous amount of lint rollers and she always has to vacuum far too much stray litter off the laundry room floor, but Jennie is happy.
She's got quality pussy and quality pussycats. What more could a girl ask for, really?
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