Fiction

And Kitty Makes Three (F/F Romance)

A Sapphic romance, a UHAUL, a black cat, and a trip to the vet

Dr. Casey Lawrence
Prism & Pen
Published in
16 min readJun 10, 2022

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Photo by Humberto Arellano on Unsplash

Sam looked at the cat. The cat looked at Sam.

It was a black cat, because of course it was, with one little white paw: exactly the kind of cat that a witchy, crystal-collecting bisexual Millennial would pick up off the street and take home to nurture. And it did look a bit like it had been a street cat once-upon-a-time, with a little chunk taken out of one ear. The ear twitched slightly as the cat lowered its gaze suspiciously, back reflexively arched.

Well, shit.

Jo hadn’t mentioned having a cat, but there was still so much they didn’t know about each other yet. Or maybe she had talked about it, and Sam had just zoned out. If Jo had been naked at the time, that was a real possibility. She must have mentioned it. Who moves in with someone without telling you they have a cat?

The cat seemed to decide between one blink and the next that Sam was not a threat, for it shot forward in a black blur and, without hesitation, began rubbing its back against her calves. Taking a careful three steps further into the bedroom, Sam deposited the box she had been carrying onto the dresser.

“Come’ere then,” she grumbled, reaching for the unexpected new addition to her household.

At least it wasn’t a rodent or a lizard or something. Sam could love a cat. A rat or a ferret or something that shed its skin would be a harder sell. The cat seemed a bit skittish, but she managed to scoop him up — and it was a him, Sam determined with a glance at the undercarriage — just before Jo got back from the UHAUL out front with her arms full of blankets.

“Oh!” she said as she spotted Sam holding the reluctant cat. “There you are! Hello, handsome!” She tossed the blankets aside and held her arms out. Sam thrust the cat into them with relief. She didn’t really have much experience with cats.

“Aren’t you a handsome boy? Oh, what a good boy!” Jo cooed, kissing the cat all over. Sam was enchanted. Of course, Jo had a cat. How could a woman like that not have a cat? The cat seemed to enjoy the attention, emitting an audible purr.

“Such a handsome boy,” Sam agreed. “We better unpack his stuff first, right?”

Jo nodded and gently placed the cat at her feet. He began to wind his way around her ankles, tail lifted high in the air, before Jo had even straightened. He was obviously very affectionate. Sam hoped that Jo didn’t let it sleep in the bed with them. There was already a layer of cat hair on the cuffs of her jeans, and it was bound to only get worse.

Jo went to the kitchen and began opening boxes in search of the cat food. Sam checked the bathroom box and one Jo has just labeled “basement” (it contained an assortment of tchotchkes), but was unable to locate the litter or litter box.

“Do you know where you put the litter box?” Sam asked, rounding the corner into the kitchen. Jo looked up and shook her head.

“I don’t think I was the one who unloaded it. And I can’t find his bowls or food, either. They weren’t in any of the kitchen boxes.”

“Oh they must still be in the truck then,” Sam said helpfully, but Jo shook her head.

“Nope, just your mattress is left in there.” Jo grabbed a shallow bowl — one of the ones Sam usually used for soy sauce when she made pot stickers — and filled it with milk from a cooler sitting open next to the refrigerator. “Here you go, little guy.”

The cat lapped up the milk happily as the couple went back to check the UHAUL. As Jo suspected, it was just Sam’s old mattress left in there, which they’d be storing in their unit’s basement locker for the time being. Sam checked under the front seats to be thorough, but there was not a litterbox in sight.

Jo, taking charge, opened her Notes App and began making a list. “Okay, so we’re missing a litter box, food bowls, cat food, and what else?”

“His bed?” Sam asked, not really knowing what else a cat needed. Jo nodded, so she must have guessed correctly.

“Right, his bed. That all must have been in one box. Well, if we were going to lose something, it isn’t the worst thing in the world. My crystal collection made it intact, and the Himalayan salt lamp looks fine, and your jewelry box…”

Sam bit her lip. Priority items, right there. That hideous pink lamp that looked like a butt plug, and all the shiny rocks (that would soon be artfully arranged on every spare surface in the flat). She collected herself and nodded. It wasn’t the end of the world to lose the cat box.

“You’re right. Something always gets lost in a move. The cat stuff is all replaceable.”

Jo nodded, her wide-brimmed hat bobbling adorably. “Exactly. Listen, on my way to drop off the UHAUL I’ll pop into a 7/11 and pick up some… Fancy Feast?”

The second half sounded like a question. Sam dug around in her brain for what she knew about cat food, and concluded that Fancy Feast must be expensive, if Jo was asking for permission.

“Yeah, he deserves a treat after what he’s been through today,” Sam said. “We can go to the pet store tomorrow to get his regular food and everything else.”

“Poor little guy lost all his worldly possessions in the move, somehow!” Jo agreed, stowing her phone. “Least I can do is get him some meaty wet food for dinner.”

Sam tried not to gag at the words ‘meaty wet food.’ She wasn’t vegan or anything, it was just one of those triggering phrases — like moist or panties. ‘Meaty.’ Bleh!

Together, they hauled the mattress to the elevator and into the basement. With some expert pivoting, they just managed to wedge the mattress into the locker diagonally. Panting like they’d run a marathon, they sat hip-to-hip on the concrete floor of the basement in front of their locker.

“I love you,” Jo said. She knocked Sam’s forehead gently with her own. “I’m so happy we live together. All three of us.”

Sam laughed and kissed her. She was already warming up to the idea of being a three of us, unexpected though the cat may have been.

Two weeks passed. Boxes were slowly unpacked. A new litterbox was purchased to replace the UHAUL box they temporarily had in the bathroom, though the cat seemed to prefer to do his business in the garden.

Sam quickly learned that this was an indoor/outdoor kind of cat. That first day when Jo was returning the UHAUL, the cat had zipped out the back door and made a run for it. Sam ran after him, but it was too late: he was gone. She considered jumping the back fence to go after him, but she wasn’t sure which way he went. Sam was sure Jo would be pissed. How do you lose a cat — especially right after apparently losing all the cat’s belongings?

But when Jo returned with the fancy cat food and made a tsking sound at the back door, the cat had returned. He ate ravenously and then mewed for more. Jo gave him another saucer of milk, set up the UHAUL box as a temporary litterbox, and made him a nest of blankets on the couch to sleep in. He made himself quite at home, settling in far more quickly than the couple themselves.

Two weeks in, Sam still wasn’t entirely sure about the whole cat situation. When Jo was gone, the cat seemed to gravitate into Sam’s space, even when she was trying to work. How did people work from home with pets or children? she wondered, feeling eyes on her. Whipping around, she once again met the beady gaze of the cat.

The cat stared at Sam. Sam stared at the cat. Her newest conundrum: what was the cat’s name? Surely, Jo had told her his name. Probably in between yoga poses, when Sam’s mind was elsewhere entirely.

It was definitely too late to ask.

The options: 1) ask now and seem like an asshole girlfriend who doesn’t listen or pay attention, or 2) never mention it and try to pick it up organically. Option 2 would delay, and possibly even prevent, her trip to the doghouse, so Option 2 it was!

“What the hell do I call you?” Sam asked the cat. The cat looked at Sam with disdain, turning and walking away with his tail held high so Sam got a delightful display of his puckered anus and dangling balls. “Alright, I’ll call you Asshole. How’s that sound?”

The cat did not deign to reply, but instead found a nice perch on the living room windowsill and began washing his genitals with his rough tongue. Sam looked away in disgust. Her stepmother had kept a budgie that she saw on weekends during visitation, but that was the extent of her pet-care experience. She suspected that the cat needed more attention than that, but beyond pouring kibble in the bowl and emptying the litterbox, Sam knew little of what that would entail.

“Okay, maybe not Asshole. What’s a common cat name? Are you… Midnight?”

The continued to lick his balls.

“Not Midnight. Boots? Mittens?”

Not a single fuck was given. With thoroughly clean testicles, the cat dropped its hind leg and looked at Sam, blinking slowly.

“Salem? What about Salem?”

The cat did not move or react in any way.

“Blink twice if your name is Shadow.”

The cat did not blink twice.

“Jo likes rocks. Are you an Onyx? Obsidian? What about… Jett? How’s Jett sound to you?”

Sam was practically pleading with the cat, but it continued to stare unfeelingly, refusing to react to any of the entirely plausible names she threw his way.

“Fuck me. Do cats even know their own name?”

The cat arched it back and then slid into a perfect downward dog, his claws extending as he stretched. Sam rolled her eyes and turned back to her computer.

“Loki.”

Not a blink.

“Floki?”

The cat stared blankly from the depths of his empty soul.

“Zorro.”

The cat’s whiskers twitched. Sam narrowed her eyes. No, not Zorro.

“Twilight.”

The cat looked positively insulted.

“Don’t give me that look!” Sam said, throwing her hands up in the air. It had been three months of this.

After three months of ‘Can you pick up food for the cat?’ and ‘Where is the cat?’ and ‘Did the cat pee on this?’, she was ready to know this damn cat’s name, even if it meant asking Jo.

“Fine, more manly. Jaguar? You could be a Jaguar. Panther? Lynx? Crow? Raven? No, Raven is a girl’s name.”

The cat lifted his tail and twitched it, as if annoyed. Sam saw a lot of emotion in his slightest movements. It was as if he were mocking her.

“Panther. Black Panther. Oh, are you named Chadwick?” Sam got down on hands and knees before her indifferent roommate, looking at him with the deepest scrutiny. “Chadwick. Chaaadwick.”

The cat closed his eyes, turning his face from her.

“Fuck you, Asshole. You’ll be Asshole forever if you don’t smarten up.”

The cat did not react to threats.

“Hello, handsome,” Jo greeted the cat as she drifted through the doorway in a flurry of scarves. Sam looked up from her computer, balking that the cat had gotten a hello from her fiancée before she did.

“Ahem.”

“And hello, beautiful,” Jo added, scooping up the cat and giving him a cuddle. The cat purred happily. He was looking much rounder these days, with a sleeker coat. He still ran off often, as if knowing that being a runaway usually meant being rewarded with Fancy Feast when he finally decided to turn up.

“Do you think we should get him a collar?” Sam asked, watching Jo give the little traitor scratches under his chin. Sam was the one home all day with him, feeding him, cleaning up after him, but of course he loved Jo the most. He was her cat, after all.

“We could try that, but he might pull it off,” Jo said. “If he didn’t have one as a kitten, he might not like it.”

Sam nodded as Jo deposited the cat onto the couch and then went to the closet to begin removing the various complicated layers of her outfit.

“That’s too bad,” Sam said, carefully weighing her options. You can’t ask the cat’s name after almost a year, but if he had a collar… “I was hoping to get him a little bowtie or something for the wedding. But if you don’t think he would tolerate it…”

Jo popped out of the closet like a jack-in-a-box. “A bowtie! Oh Sam, that would be so cute!” She practically squealed in delight. “Our little fancy man in a tux.”

Jo flung herself into Sam’s arms and kissed her. It was exactly the sort of thing she loved — animals in Halloween costumes, videos of dogs saying ‘I love you,’ that cat who learned sign language from its deaf owner. Having the cat in the wedding party was a no-brainer for Sam; she knew Jo would love it, and if it made Jo happy, it would make Sam happy.

“How else can he be the Cat of Honor?” Sam asked between kisses. “We can get him a little bowtie collar with his name on it in Rhinestones, or something.”

“That sounds adorable,” agreed Jo.

“Great! You should pick it out though. You’re so much better at that sort of thing than I am.”

A collar with his name on it would be unmistakeable proof of nomenclature. Sam would finally know the Little Asshole’s name. Cosmo? Vader? Ninja? Rogue?

Sam was watching Jo’s face, and noticed a flash of — something. Worry? Sadness? Her excited face slipped like a mask for just a second, but Sam saw it. What was that?

“We should take him to the vet to get checked out before the wedding,” Jo said after a beat. The expression was gone. Sam wondered if she had seen it at all, that weird look in her fiancée’s eyes. “He’s been putting on a bit of weight lately. I wouldn’t want to live him with your mom if he’s sick or something. What if he’s got feline diabetes?”

The plan was to leave the cat with Sam’s mom for the honeymoon. They were going to an all-inclusive resort in Cancun that Jo’s parents had paid for, so it didn’t seem fair to ask them to watch the cat as well.

“Sure,” Sam said.

“Great! Can you take him next week? I’ve got back-to-back meetings, so I can’t take him.”

Sam gritted her teeth but said, “Fine,” before pulling Jo into a long kiss. The cat watched them stoically, clearly unimpressed by the humans’ public displays of affection.

Sam made an appointment with a vet. It was the nearest one — she asked Jo if it was the right vet during breakfast, and Jo shot her a thumbs-up with her mouth full of cereal. The cat was unceremoniously dumped into a cardboard box for the car ride; they didn’t have a carrier for him, and Sam was worried he’d jump around in the car if she let him be free.

Normally, she’d be a bit miffed that Jo asked her to take her cat to the vet. Really, it seemed like more and more the cat had become Sam’s responsibility somehow, even though she never really signed up for it.

But today, Sam was excited. Because she could ask the vet what the cat’s name was. The vet might judge her for not knowing her own cat’s name, but who cares?

The other pet-parents had carriers in the waiting room. Sam just had a box. She hoped she didn’t look entirely irresponsible as she waited to be called in for her appointment.

When she was called into the exam room, she was shown to the room by a vet technician named Anne. Anne was a broad sort of woman who looked very no-nonsense.

“Who do we have here?” she asked, offering Sam a patient intake form.

“Funny story, that,” Sam said, hoping she wasn’t about to present some nonsense. “I moved in with my girlfriend and her cat, and I don’t actually know the cat’s name but I figured — it’s way too late to ask now, right? So I just call him Asshole. But he should be registered here.”

The vet tech tsked and made a note in Asshole’s chart. “What’s her name? Your girlfriend?”

“Josephine Lee,” Sam said.

Anne left and then returned with a tablet, shaking her head. “No Josephine Lee in our system. Could it be under another name?”

“She goes by Jo. Or, I guess maybe it could be under her mom’s name, Patricia Lee?”

Anna tapped the tablet a few times, still shaking her head. “No, no cats under Lee at all. You sure she came to this veterinarian?” Sam shrugged. “Well, we’ll get you to fill out the intake form then and register as a new patient, then. I’ll take… the cat’s measurements and then speak to the doctor.”

Sam filled in the form as best as she could while Anne weighed and measured the cat. She lifted his tail, gently opened his mouth to check his teeth, pulled on his toes to check his claws. He seemed unimpressed.

“We don’t see intact male cats all that often anymore,” she said when she had his tail up. “Have you considered neutering him?”

“I’ll have to ask Jo what she thinks,” Sam said. “It’s her cat.”

When the forms had been filled — minus his name, birthday, age, breed, and a dozen other things Sam didn’t know — she waited with Asshole for the vet.

The vet was a slender blonde with a bouncy ponytail. She whirled into the room like she was on roller skates and began asking questions that Sam couldn’t answer. Once she had repeated the story she’d told Anne, the vet — whose name, confusingly, was Anna — offered a surprisingly obvious solution to her problem.

“Why don’t I just check his microchip?”

Sam nearly slapped her own forehead. Of course! They microchip outdoor cats!

Anna moved a magic wand over the cat, starting with his ears and then moving in a zigzag over his back. The machine beeped — and then beeped again.

“Oh, that’s strange,” she said. She wheeled herself over to her computer while the cat sat perfectly still on the exam table, looking like a statue save for his twitching tail.

“What’s up?” Sam asked.

“Your cat seems to have been chipped twice. Once in the ear and once in the shoulder. Different vets.” She tapped tapped tapped away on her keyboard, then raised her eyebrows. “Why, this is a surprise. He’s got two addresses on the same street.”

“He’s double-timing us?” Sam asked, shocked.

“It seems like another owner must have taken him to their vet and had him chipped. They must have thought he was a stray and adopted him.”

Sam shook her head. “No wonder he’s getting fat, if he’s getting two dinners! I bet he acts like he’s never eaten for them, too.” Sam leaned forward toward the cat, who remained stoic. “Shame on you, Asshole.”

The vet snorted. “Alright. So he’s either Sparky or Smokey, then. Are you living at number 12 or number 16 Westmoreland Street?”

Sam paused, bit her lip, and shook her head. “We’re at number 14 Westmoreland.” Both Sam and Anna turned to the cat, who looked at them with big, innocent eyes. They began to laugh.

“I can’t wait to tell Jo her cat has managed to ingratiate himself into two other families.”

“Well, we can probably chalk the weight gain up to overeating, rather than a thyroid issue or feline diabetes,” the vet said after taking a moment to regain her composure.

“You hear that, Sparky-Smokey-Asshole? You’re just fat.”

When Jo got home, Sam sat her down to tell her the news: their cat was cheating on them. She broke down in absolute hysterics, giving her Chonky Boy a good snuggle.

“We’ll have to tell the neighbors to stop feeding him,” she said. “Hi, nice to meet you, this is our cat and you’re making him fat!”

Jo baked cookies because of course she did. They were shaped like stars and moons because of course they were. She filled two Tupperware containers to bring to the neighbors. It had been almost a year since they moved in and they’d never introduced themselves; the days of doing that, or borrowing a cup of sugar, seemed strangely distant, a childhood memory that didn’t quite seem real.

Sam opted out of going along, feigning a headache. The idea of talking to the neighbors (let alone scolding them for adopting their cat) gave her anxiety.

Jo went without her, donning a wide-brimmed hat and a flowy scarf for the occasion.

When she returned, Jo looked different. She had a pinched look to her face, like she was holding back a sneeze.

“When were you going to tell me,” she said, her words clipped and angry, “that this isn’t your fucking cat?”

“What?” Sam said, looking up at Jo from the couch. She was pointing to Asshole like an accusation. “What do you mean?”

“The couple in 12 have been feeding this cat for three years. Three years, Samantha! He’s their cat, and apparently, his name is Sparky!”

Sam eyed Asshole appraisingly. He didn’t look like a Sparky.

Then Jo’s words finally clicked, and Sam sat bolt upright. “Three years?!”

“You let me fall in love with this cat that you stole from the neighbor?”

“Wait, hold on!” Sam looked at Jo and then at the cat and back again. “He isn’t your cat? You didn’t bring him when we moved in a year ago?”

Jo’s face pinched farther. “No! He was your cat!”

“I thought he was your cat!”

They both looked at the cat. Sparky began to lick his testicles.

“You mean to say — ”

“Are you telling me — ”

Speaking over each other, Sam and Jo began to laugh.

“We’ve been conned!” Sam said.

“We’ve been had!” Jo agreed. “This little monster waltzed right into our home…”

The neighbors’ cat, Sparky, twitched his tail, smirking at the two of them like, well, like a cat who got the cream.

“You Little Asshole,” Sam said, shaking her head at him. She turned to Jo. “Do you know what this means?”

“What?” asked Jo.

“We’re going to have to ask his real parents if he can be our Cat of Honor!”

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Prism & Pen
Prism & Pen

Published in Prism & Pen

Amplifying LGBTQ voices through the art of storytelling

Dr. Casey Lawrence
Dr. Casey Lawrence

Written by Dr. Casey Lawrence

Canadian author of three LGBT YA novels. PhD from Trinity College Dublin. Check out my lists for stories by genre/type.

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