when I first saw Cloud, I wasn’t sure what to think. With his overly large eyes, his extra long tail, and the bits of fluff popping out from his ears, he was a strange sight. in fact, I even scrolled past his picture on Facebook. My childhood cat had just passed, and I was broken-hearted, hut this strange, little creature didn’t seem like the right one to fix it.

A week later, his picture popped up again. He was days away from being taken to a pound, where he might have faced a grim future. With teary eyes, I showed his picture to my grandma, with whom I was living at the time, and asked if we could bring him home to live with us. The house seemed lonely without a cat, even with our three dogs.

Reluctantly, she agreed as long as he would count as my Christmas gift and I kept his litter cleaned. That seemed like a good deal to me. Plus, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t also wanted to get him to impress my new boyfriends, who loved cats too.

Within a few days, the kitten came home to live with us. I was incredibly happy until I realized how absolutely crazy kittens are. His favorite thing was to silently wait by my face as I slept and then sink his sharp, little claws into my face as I woke up. I quickly learned the best course of action was to pull a pillow over my face and sit up before opening my eyes. It was a lesson learned the hard way, of course. Luckily, it was something he grew out of.

Unfortunately, my grandma’s dogs were not as lucky as I was The Cocker Spaniel. in particular, was a favorite plaything of Cloud’s. He would lie in wait for Puddles to walk by before silently leaping from the shadows to grab onto the dog’s neck and nip his ear. At first, Puddles thought this was great fun. Finally, someone actualIy wanted to play with him! The other two dogs were party poopers that never wanted to do anything but eat and nap.

Puddles enjoyed the attention until Cloud got older. His claws is got sharper, his teeth got bigger, and he became far more accurate with his attacks. Eventually, Puddles learned his best course of action was to ignore Cloud altogether.