Why You Shouldn't Accept Free Kittens

“You mean I can just have it? For free?” I asked incredulously, examining the healthy-looking kitten I was holding at arm’s length.

The squat old lady smiled, revealing a row of snaggly, yellow teeth. “She’s all yours,” she said. The kitten mewled pitifully, and I automatically hugged her to my chest. 

“Is it, like, vaccinated or anything?” I didn’t really care, but I felt obliged to ask. Didn’t need to go around infecting the neighbors’ dogs with rabies. The lady wrinkled her eyebrows in confusion. “You know, feline leukemia or rabies or whatever?”

“All yours,” repeated the lady vaguely, avoiding my question. Before I could prod further, she turned and waddled away, her tattered form disappearing into the crowd. I watched her go, and then turned to the kitten in my arms and shrugged.

“Whatever,” I said.

Technically, I was supposed to be going to the gym today, but I decided that it was more important to get the kitten settled. We stopped by the pet store on our way home, and I picked up a bag of cat food, a cat bed, and some toys.

“Maybe someday I’ll get you a cat tree,” I told the little ball of fuzz, “but that’s not in the budget at the moment.” She meowed in response. “Right! We do need food and water dishes! You’re so smart,” I cooed, tickling her furry chin.

We strolled down the aisle and picked out a cute set of dishes covered in little painted fish. As I stood in the checkout line, something occurred to me.

“You need a name,” I informed the cat.

She blinked up at me with huge green eyes. “Meow,” she said seriously.

“How about… Kitty…” I said lamely. “No, that’s not very good. I swear I had a whole bunch of cute names for my future cat, but I can’t remember any of them.”

I looked around the store, searching for inspiration. “I could name you Kleenex or Snickers or something,” I suggested, but those didn’t seem quite right. Struck by an idea, I tapped the shoulder of the lady in front of me. “Excuse, ma’am, what’s your name?”

She gave me a withering look. “Who wants to know?”

“Sorry, that does sound weird,” I agreed. “Okay, what’s the first female name that pops into your head?” She continued staring at me like I was crazy. “C’mon, it could be anything,” I prompted. “Jane or Rose or anything at all.”

“Bridget. My name is Bridget,” she said. Before I could thank her, a cashier waved her over and she hurried away, pushing a shopping cart laden with groceries.

“Bridget, huh?” I asked the kitten. “Good enough for me.”

“Meow,” she agreed.

I strolled out to my car, Bridget in one arm and a plastic bag of spoils in the other. Feeling cheerful, I hummed a tune as I settled Bridget into the passenger seat and buckled the seat belt around her. 

“You stay there, okay?” Call me crazy, but I swear that she nodded.

I could bore you with all the little details of our day, but I won’t. Needless to say, Bridget and I had a wonderful time, and she slept on my pillow that night. As I drifted off to sleep listening to her snores, it was satisfying to know that my first pet was a total success. 

The next day, I woke up bright and early to get ready for work. Bridget had already left the spot on my bed and was waiting hungrily by her food dish. The dry kibble clinked against the ceramic bowl as I dumped in a generous pile.

“I gotta take a shower,” I told Bridget. “Can’t be smelling like shit at my job, now can I?” She purred as I scratched behind her ears. I entered the bathroom in a good mood, but by the time I left it, a frown had crept onto my face.

“Have you seen my favorite necklace?” I asked Bridget. “I can’t find it.” She had no answer for me, so I decided that it must have been misplaced. After all, I was aware that I had lost hundreds of dollars to all the things I had lost over the years. “Maybe it’ll turn up tomorrow,” I said hopefully.

Except, the next day, two pairs of earrings were gone. And the day after that, my AirPods had vanished from the kitchen counter. Within a week, I could no longer locate my phone, any of my jewelry, or one of my favorite books.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” I admitted to one of my coworkers. “I lose a lot of stuff, but even this is getting ridiculous. Is someone breaking into my house while I’m away?”

“Install an alarm system,” my coworker suggested.

Alarm systems are expensive. However, when my laptop went missing the next day, I was willing to invest in it.

“Keep an eye out for burglars,” I informed Bridget as I set up sensors near my windows and doors. She gave me that wide-eyed serious look that had been on her face the day I got her. “You hereby have my permission to attack them should they enter the house.”

“Meow,” she said sternly.

“Exactly,” I agreed.

I woke up the next morning feeling proud. The alarm hadn’t gone off, which meant that nothing should be missing from my home. My morning shower went by as usual -- the shampoo bottles were still there, and my only remaining pair of earrings was safe and sound in the cabinet.

All was going well until I walked into the living room.

I stopped, staring at an empty patch of floor where something very important usually sat. “My couch is gone.” Bridget meowed from the kitchen, letting me know that she needed to be fed. “Bridget,” I said, “my couch is gone!”

When I got to work, I informed my coworker that the alarm system hadn’t worked. “Someone stole my couch,” I added. “I think I’m going to call the police.”

“I was about to suggest that,” my coworker said lamely. 

The nice lady on the phone agreed to send an officer out to investigate when I called, but I got the impression that she thought I was kidding. Or possibly a crazy old person.

A few hours later, I stormed into my house after sitting through a particularly stressful meeting, only to find that my belongings had not gone untouched. Now, not only was my couch gone from the living room, but also my TV. The living room was now a bare skeleton of a place, devoid of half of its furniture.

A knock sounded at the front door, and I hurried to answer it. Outside, a young, bored-looking police officer stood on the porch. He looked a little surprised to find that I was also young (apparently the dispatcher lady told him about her impression from our phone call). Bridget, who had grown a considerable amount by now, ran and hid under the bed immediately upon sighting the cop.

“My name is Officer Davidson,” he said. “Are you the one who called about your possessions being stolen?”

“That would be me,” I replied. “And you’re just in time, because it appears that someone has just taken my TV.” The officer raised his eyebrows. I led him into the living room and explained about my vanishing couch and the absent TV. He managed to look at least concerned, but as soon as I had finished my story he spoke up.

“Do you have security cameras?”

I said no, and he informed me that they could send in investigators, but that not much could be done if there wasn’t security footage to work off of.

For those who aren’t aware, security cameras are also expensive. But, I was kind of missing my stuff at this point, so I invested in a security camera for each room in the house, including the bathroom.

By the time the cameras arrived two days later, my ornate bedroom rug, the microwave, five skillets, one lamp, seven plates, and the dining room table were gone.

This was getting out of hand.

I phoned the police station after installing the cameras and informed them that I would have lost all of my home furnishings by the end of the week. The woman sounded sympathetic, but also like she couldn’t care less about my predicament.

That night, I made sure that all the security cameras were up and working before going to bed. For a long time, I lay staring at the ceiling. Tonight was the night. By tomorrow, I would have the thief on tape and I would finally get my house back.

I drifted off to sleep, feeling relaxed for the first time in a while, with Bridget’s little ball of warmth curled up next to my head.

My eyes drifted close, and almost immediately I was awoken by my morning alarm. Shafts of morning sunlight fell in through my window, illuminating the room. With a tired groan, I rolled out of my sheets and swung my feet over the lip of the bed.

Splat.

I looked down, frightened at what I might find. The wood floor of my bedroom (devoid of a certain ornate rug) was covered in about an inch of standing water.

“Ewwwww,” I said. Even though my better judgment told me to go back to bed and wait to wake up from this horrible nightmare, I somehow managed to stand up and make my way to the hallway, my bare feet sloshing unpleasantly through the water.

I entered the hallway, and it was instantly clear what had caused the water. Through the clear shot into the bathroom, I was able to see that the toilet (yes, the goddamn toilet) had been ripped from the floor and was gone.

All that remained was the jagged stump of a pipe that continued to belch up water every few moments. 

Part of me was furious. Okay, most of me was furious. The water would ruin not only my furniture, but also the walls and the floor and the very structure of the house! This could cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Also… the toilet? Really? This criminal certainly had an odd taste in things to steal.

But another part of me was victorious. Remember, I had installed a security camera in the bathroom the night before, so I would know exactly who did it.

Splashing triumphantly over to the desktop computer, I cheerfully retrieved the file. A slightly damp Bridget peeked out at me from behind the monitor. “I’ve got ‘em, I’m sure of it,” I told her happily. “I’ll make them pay for flooding my house.”

I was so confident that I dialed the number of the police station, ready to tell the dispatcher of my very exciting discovery.

Leaning in, I watched the footage intently. When the time stamp read 10:00, I saw myself going in to piss one last time before bed. The minutes ticked away in the corner, but no one came in. Midnight, then one, then two. “Where is he?” I muttered.

When the time stamp read 4:03, something entered the bathroom. I squinted at it excitedly, only to find that it was Bridget.

“Look, Bridget,” I said, pointing to the screen but looking at the cat. “It’s you!”

I turned my attention back to the monitor…

And let loose a bloodcurdling scream.

I cannot even begin to describe what I saw in the bathroom. 

Something absolutely terrifying had happened to my cat. It was like some sort of alien creature emerged from her stomach, ripped the toilet from the ground, and swallowed it whole. Imagine the worst horror-movie zombie mixed with the shittiest CGI alien and multiply the level of terrifyingness by about a billion.

And then, a minute later, it was gone.

The toilet hole spewed out a fountain of water, and the Bridget-thing ran out of the bathroom to avoid being soaked.

I looked away from the computer, glancing at Bridget. She looked like an ordinary kitten. No sign of whatever had eaten my toilet.

“Maybe it was a trick of the light?” I said to no one in particular. “Some practical joke?”

“Mrow,” she said, leaping from the desk and onto the ground, her tiny paws making a minuscule splash in the water. I watched silently as Bridget approached the beaten leather armchair, walking stiff-legged through the lake of a floor. She crouched, preparing to spring onto it and settle into the worn, cat-sized dent in the cushion. 

But instead of leaping, my cat turned into a monster.

I’m still a little shaken up from this, but I’ll explain it as best I can.

She opened her mouth, and… inverted herself, I guess. Just turned herself inside out, but instead of organs and stuff on the inside, she had this giant tunnel of a mouth, filled with rotating serrated teeth.

Again, can only truly be described as a horror-movie monster.

Only this time, it wasn’t in grainy black-and-white camera footage with a time stamp in the corner. It was right in front of me, in full-color and high definition. Unleashing an unearthly snarl, it pounced upon the leather armchair and swallowed it in one gulp.

And just like that, the monster reinvented itself and became a fluffy kitten.

“Meow,” said Bridget.

I gawked at her, speechless for a moment. “I am not living in this house with… that thing,” I said aloud. Glancing at the standing water that was marinating on the flooring and baseboards, I revised my statement. “I am not living in this house, period. I need to get out of here.”

“Hello?” 

I jumped about a foot in the air (first my cat turned into a monster, and now it speaks English), only to realize that it was just the lady from the police station. I had completely forgotten that I had called her. 

“Is anyone there?” I fumbled with the phone for a minute before choking out an answer.

“Hello, it’s me, and yes, I’m fine, just an accidental dial I think, also just forget about the whole investigation thing I decided not to press charges okay bye!” 

I hung up.

The next day, two things happened. One, I had put my house up for sale, as-is. The flood damage was pretty bad, and I didn’t really want to stay in the area after the… incident. And two, I went to the nearest gas station with the Bridget-thing in a cardboard box. On it, I had written Free Cat in Sharpie.

My wise father once told me, “If you want to get rid of something, give it away for free.” And believe me, I really wanted to get rid of this cat. Or not-cat. Whatever it was.

It took maybe two minutes for a young, pretty-looking woman to come up to me. “Aww,” she said. “It’s adorable.”

“She’s free, too,” I added.

“Really? I can just have her? For free?” The woman looked up from Bridget, startled. Before I could respond, the kitten let out a pitiful meow, and the woman scooped her out of the box. She straightened up, cuddling Bridget to her chest.

“She’s all yours,” I assured her. “All yours.”