Practicalmadness

Meet Sophie. Sophie weighs less than three pounds. Sophie is smaller than a breadbox. Sophie has taken over our apartment. Sophie is a cat, actually an illegal feline alien in this apartment, and her demands are as follows:

1. More food!
2. No, not that food!

We adopted Sophie from The Anti-Cruelty Society after bonding with two cats at PAWS Chicago because, well, PAWS is more of a club for Lincoln Park yuppies who want to feel like they're part of the solution, whereas the Anti-Cruelty is more concerned with, you know, finding homes for kitties than with such worldly matters as minimum age requirements.

It all began a week ago -- our day off -- when we went to PAWS (an acronym for "Pets Are Worth Saving"), whose public kitty shelter is open weekdays from 6-8 pm, and is conveniently located about four blocks south of us on Clark Street. There I tried to pierce the icy veneer of an aloof Russian Blue named Vera, and Jenny decided that a big tabby named Lucky was the bestest cat who'd ever catted a cat.

"Look at him," she said of Lucky. "He's just so...cat!"
"Of course; that's his schtick."
"I don't think I'm ready to live in a city where the cats have schtick!"

We decided that Lucky was the cat for us, and asked to initiate the adoption procedure. Then, suddenly, we were shot down -- we were perfect, we just are neither of us 25. The adoption counselor -- wearing that Corporately Concerned expression (registered trademark of Katie Couric, all rights reserved) -- explained to us over and over that she's sure we're great kids, she's just had so many problems, we're great kids, this one 21-year-old's roommate once let a half-dozen cats loose and only one was ever found, kidsssss, over and over until we were out the door and screaming for pamby yuppie blood.

Compare this with the procedure at Anti-Cruelty: we came in. We met the kitties. We found the bestest kitty ever. We were sent downstairs with a form. We filled out the form. After 20 minutes, a shelter volunteer showed us into a windowless room and reviewed our responses. She *corrected* our adoption application as if it were last week's geometry quiz.

And apparently we got a passing score, because after another twenty minutes she returned with our then-nameless cat's file and said she was ours. Twenty minutes later we had paid the fee, signed the contract and our new kitty was handed to us in a cardboard carrier, newly outfitted with a tracking microchip.

(Major animal shelters have now begun to implant AVID permanent ID microchips into homeless cats' necks, giving them effectively a kitty serial number. If Sophie were ever to turn up missing, we could call the City Pound, the Anti-Cruelty, PAWS, et al. and ask if a kitty with AVID ID number x had been brought in recently, and we could claim her with our copy of her registration sticker. Yes, she is a living thing, with a tracking ID which can be read by a radio device. I'm scared too.)

Sophie's litter box dominates a large corner of our tiny apartment, while her food dishes occupy the spot right by my feet at my desk, so I am constantly interrupted by Sophie's yowls for kitty lovin': "Pet me! Love me! Feed me!!"

Her favoritest thing in the whole world is her catnip mouse, so special to her that she hides it under the bed.