On a first date at someone’s house in Waverly, I met the love of my life. She was skittish and shy, perched atop a tree. She was 8 inches high, and all of 6 lbs. When I walked up to her she ran away– a sneeze of reddish brown–swept up the stairs and out of sight. –Who was that? I asked my date.–Cricket. They said, dreamily. Cricket. I thought, dreamily. Over a year passed before we’d see each other again.Well into adulthood, I was terrified of cats. Their incessant scratching, their vicious biting, their horrible breath. Their dander crapping itself like lice all over the carpet. The way they saw or spoke or danced with ghosts. Their strange crying called meows. It made my skin crawl. Orange flags of not-safe flashed around me. Alley cats, Disney cats, cats in cars with cigars–everything about cats was scary. They were too grown, too antisocial, too snooty. At their best they were unpredictable; at their worst, they were violent. One night when I was about eight years old, I was sleeping at my aunt’s house. She had a black cat with a white belly. I remember the T.V. being on. One of Tyler Perry’s many Madea stage plays rocking its way across the night. Nothing was funny, but someone was laughing. The light from the T.V. glowed like a gland in the back of the mouth. It swallowed all the dark. Laying in the dark, in a full-sized bed next to my aunt, I saw it, her cat, creeping paw by paw from the bottom of the bed towards me. I held my breath. I didn’t blink. I stiffened up like a witch. stiff as a board; light as feather. I chanted over and over. I had never been so terrified. Blinky, or whatever its name was, sauntered up to my face and sniffed. Then, abruptly as if called by Poe’s great spirit, darted off the bed. When she reached the far wall, she would just run back to the opposite wall. Again and again. I didn’t sleep a wink that night. Blinky had the zoomies. I had the spookies. It also didn’t help that cats made me sick. Runny nose, watery eyes, compulsive sneezing until my back ached. If I walked into a house, I could smell them before I saw them. As a child, my greatest opposition at a sleepover was an overly friendly black cat. For whatever reason, black cats aggravated my allergies the worst. In college, I remember one homecoming weekend, when I went to an off-campus party. As soon as I walked into the apartment, I started violently sneezing. There’s a black cat here! Someone yelled over the speakers. I drained my drink. And spent the rest of the night outside. I grew up in a house that was aggressively anti-pet. They’re expensive, my dad would say. They’re dirty and they stink, my mom would say. They’re just another thing to take care of, they would say in tandem. Once, my dad folded and let my eldest brother get three hamsters. They were cute, covered in fur like a glove over a hand. They sang little cries and crawled into your palm when you took them out of the cage. They stunk up my brothers’ room with rancid smells akin to long stretches of the Harbor. One day, my brothers and I went out of town for a track meet. My mom was the only one home for the weekend. When we came back, he bounded up the stairs excited to see his babies. Except what he found were three starved and rotting bodies. He was distraught. Inconsolable. He cried and wailed and raged against the parental machines.Oh, my mom said dispassionately, I guess I forgot to feed ‘em.Once, I won a goldfish at the fair. I swung a hammer really well or guessed the number of gumballs in a jar or something displaying one of my many talents. I walked home with a goldfish in a bag. I was proud; a parent. Dad took me to the Petco and we bought food and a bowl. I poured its little body into the bowl and watched it swim gleefully through the transparent expanse. You’re home, I whispered lovingly into the bowl. But then I looked closer. I saw it. Like really saw it. Orange as a snake with an o-shaped mouth. Its mohawk wagging like a blade. Its beady eyes following my hand like a sausage to nibble on. It’s body as narrow as a pencil. I was suddenly shaken with fear. What if it crawled out of the bowl and tried to eat me in the middle of the night? What if it grew legs and started chanting in French? What if the shape of its mouth was the exact shape to suck the soul out of a human body? I didn’t sleep that night. I didn’t feed it all the next day. Then, the following morning, I woke up and it was floating belly up in an opaque fog of its own demise. I was disgusted. First with myself then with the principle: how had I let something I once claimed to care for die? In no time at all I had earned motherhood, been horrified by the stakes and shape, and then, by the unwise merits of fear, had become a monster. I swore to never make that same mistake again. Love is strange. It never comes twice in the same way. Sometimes it happens when you’re not looking. Sometimes it happens when you’ve already given up. Sometimes it comes and clears up your cat allergies and suddenly you’re a fanatic cat lady.By the time I was an adult and had moved to Reservoir Hill with my best friend, we were both in gay relationships. Like most lesbians, our boos had cats. Because of this, I was spending most nights with a black cat zooming around my head, bumping my forehead and crying out at 2 a.m. I was caught off guard with how quickly my disgust, and allergies, began to recede. I played with the cat. I fed the cat. I even got close enough to pick up the cat. It was around this time that my best friend and I decided we needed to catch up and join the team. Luckily, my former first date had turned into a close friend. They were looking to rehome their cat. Her name, you already know, but her story still amazes me. Born in New Orleans, Cricket was found on the streets. Around the railroad tracks near Burgundy Street. Her parents had given her the most beautiful genetic anomaly: a curly tail. The curl of a question. A Black girl’s curls. A hot curly fry. Found near a bakery, crying out a song similar to a cricket’s call she was aptly named. When my bestie and I drove to Waverly to pick up Cricket, she hid from us. Again, too shy to join the party. That was until we took out the Taharka ice cream. On her back paws, she stood high as my knee and licked all the non-dairy strawberry ice cream left in our bowls.Welcome home, my bestie and I said, as we took our honey-colored child home with us. When we first got Cricket, she was skinny–anxiety skinny. But one toxic spring, I gave her the same body goals as me: to gain 20 lbs. When I’d come home from lifting in the gym, I’d double scoop the dry food onto her bowl. After a few months of this, we both grew thick and happy. When we first got Cricket, she was shy and hid a lot. But then she caught the vibes: the two Black girls sitting on a Pepto Bismol-colored couch binging Black Ink Crew just wanted to love her. Now, all we do is cuddle. Some nights, I get up and she’s sleeping on my neck. Some nights I get up and the soft lump beneath me is her instead of my pillow. And always, when I come home she greets me as giddy as any fanatic dog– barking her high-pitched cricket song and encircling my feet.Once upon a time, I couldn’t love cats because I was afraid. And sure, fear and disgust are motivating, but aren’t they unfounded filters? Unfounded as maybe transphobia, genocide or racism? Whoa there writer, that’s a big leap. Or is it? Everyone has beauty. Even the mohawked. Everyone deserves their life. Even those who make you sneeze.