Preparing for a Battle between Good and Evil: Finding My New Feline Roommates Transforming My Home into a Cat Dojo

After an exhausting couple of days, I await the arrival of my new Master and Mistress this evening signaling the end of the Age of Terror, spiritually speaking.

I have been awake for three and a half hours and I am exhausted.

The mindfulness and awareness required to expel the evil spirit invading my townhouse drains me of my daily energy in less than four hours of wakefulness.

Needless to say, she is angry with me. I can feel the waves of anger surrounding me increase as I think of the imminent arrival of my new master and mistress: the two kittens, brother and sister, that I adopted late yesterday evening.

The evil spirit invading my life started out aggressively. She comes from an unknown source. At first, she pretended to be my aunt attempting to gain my trust. That was a couple of months ago. She has since let go of those deceitful pretenses becoming harshly critical and throwing up obstacles in my path.

Those obstacles were most apparent yesterday when I ventured out with the notion of adopting two kittens.

I know of the traditional mystical role assigned to cats in the ancient world. That idea was secondary to the psychological benefits that adopting animals would provide to both myself and to them. I thought I could provide a home to a pair of siblings in need opening up my home creating a loving cross-species family.

This plan seems to have greatly disturbed the evil spirit invading my life. Starting at noon on Sunday, I visited four separate animal shelters. The first one turned me away at their door outright. They did not accept walk ups on the same day. The second shelter had a grand total of 2 cats, both were already adopted and waiting for their new owners to take them home.

Approaching the third shelter, I nearly got rear-ended on an open and clear 4-lane road. I don’t know how fast the car behind me was driving, neither do I know why they first tried to pass me on the left as I signaled to make a left turn into the animal shelter.

After that near costly vehicular incident, I approached the gate to what looked like a prison built for people, complete with 15-foot gates topped with barbed-wire. The gate guard directed me to the left to park. The left side of the compound is where they kept their dogs. I asked four employees where they kept their cats and got four different answers.

One of those four employees was able to direct me to where I should have gone, to the right of the security gate at the compound’s entrance to a building that I would estimate at about 5,000 square feet. A building that much of the staff seemed unaware of its existence. This facility had zero cats inside. They said they kept all their rescue animals in foster care and directed me to their website.

Next, I went back to my car and found a fourth shelter a 20-minute drive away from my current location.

They only accepted visitors by appointment. I made an appointment for 20 minutes from that point in time.

I programed Siri on my iPhone to take me to the shelter. About 20-minutes later, Siri had me driving around in circles about half a mile from the shelter. 5 minutes late for my appointment, I called the shelter to get directions. They managed to get me to drive the last half mile to their location that Siri wouldn’t give me.

During the entire drive from the third shelter to the fourth, the evil spirit invading my life was having a conniption fit.

I could hear her voice coming through on my cars radio as she spoke in a crazy monologue to herself:

“I like cats. I love cats. I just don’t like YOUR cats. Why do you have to get THESE cats?! They don’t like me. I’m good with cats, cats I can control, cats I can dominate. These cats are little brats. Why are you getting these cats? Don’t you like me? Don’t you love me? I said you love me, so you must love me. You are mean to me.”

This monologue and similar flowed over the dial on my radio in between and over-lapping the songs the radio station was actually playing. The voice of Siri on my iPhone also seemed strangely to become increasingly irritated as I approached the shelter.

The spirit only seemed to get satisfied and relieved when the time for my appointment passed as I was lost driving in circles on the roads surrounding the shelter. The sense of panic and anger in the air around me increased again when I finally could see and approached the shelter.

Exhausted from hours of searching for my sibling pair of felines, I entered the shelter and wearily gazed over the cats in their cages looking for any sign that those cats could be my cats.

I told the shelter employees that I was interested in adopting a pair of siblings.

They directed me towards two male cats, about 1 year old.

I sat with them for a few minutes but was more drawn to the third cat in the cage that kept himself at a distance from the brothers. When I was finished, I opened the door to their cage to leave and one of the brothers darted out to freedom.

An escape artist, none of the shelter’s employees saw him at first. After informing one of them that he had a cat under his feet and placing him back into the cage with his brother, I decided to take a look at the kitten cage.

I originally didn’t bother with the younger kittens because the signs on the door indicated that 6 out of the 8 kittens inside were already adopted.

I figured the odds of me finding a brother and sister pair were pretty long at this late point on a Sunday evening as the shelter was about to close.

I examined the signs closer and saw that the two remaining kittens, one male and one female, had the same birthday, were the same color, and were brought in by the same person. I must’ve sat in the cage with those 8 kittens for about half an hour.

Abigail, a name that means “brings my father joy” seemed terrorized by her surroundings. She had obviously been through too much in the last few days in the hot and crowed shelter. Her brother Ryan, which means “king” was more active, thumping the smaller kittens on the head with his paw.

At slightly over 2 months old, Abigail and Ryan were about twice the size of the other 6 kittens in the kitten cage. Both were solid black. Ryan was more approachable and sat in my lap without too much effort on my behalf. Abigail seemed like a solider stricken with PTSD who’d seen too much. She kept her distance from me and the other kittens.

In the end, I took a chance and decided that these kittens must be my master and mistress, my awaited guardians of the spirit realm. Abigail just needed to be taken away from that horrible environment and shown her home.

I went to the desk and completed the adoption paperwork.

I walked back to the kitten cage and placed the “adopted” signs over the placards for Ryan and Abigail. Ryan ran towards the door to greet me, but I was unable to express “see you tomorrow.” Hopefully, when I return today he will remember me.

I went back to my car and programmed Siri to take me home. Siri sounded strangely robotic, which was a relief. She also took me on a new route home which I found unusual. I had been in the neighborhood where I adopted the two kittens several times before and Siri had always taken me home on a different route, albeit with some attitude. I found the new route refreshing.

I spent Sunday evening and Monday morning cat-proofing my house. Cat-proofing is a misnomer since such a thing is impossible. Cats, especially kittens, will always find something you missed. I eagerly await their quality control inspection.

I now refer to my townhome as Markus’s Cat Dojo.

I didn’t realize it, but I must’ve been preparing for their arrival for several months. All my furniture is feline friendly. Even the townhome I purchased a few months ago seems designed for the pleasure and approval of cats.

Buying cat toys will not be necessary as everything I own is already a cat toy in its own right. Besides, cats notoriously don’t like items specifically designed to be cat toys. This morning I ordered breakfast from DoorDash including coffee which came with a great kitten toy: the cardboard coffee cup holder.

I can see at least 3 stages of cat development within my townhome from basic kitten up to advanced cat. It’s a virtual cat Disneyland around here. The number of things to climb, play with, bat around, hide under, and claw are numerous.

I hate the very ugly curtains that came with the townhome when I bought it.

They are very sturdy and can easily hold the weight of a couple of rambunctious gravity defying kittens. There are two sets of those, one upstairs and one downstairs. I will be grateful when they rip those apart. They don’t really need replacing. The retractable shades work just fine. The ledge behind the curtains is a perfect place to both hide from me and look out and down upon the world outside.

My cheap $20 throw rugs are perfect for scratching.

I have a couple of very soft blankets thrown onto my cheap pleather sofa, a place which I believe they will probably spend a majority of their time. There’s the staircase leading from the first to the second floor. I have no idea how they will make use of that attraction.

There’s my children’s swing, hung up by chains from an A-frame.

That will certainly become a kitten jungle gym. There’s the 7 foot tall open dresser storage areas that currently hold my socks and underwear that will inevitably be thrown to the ground, some joyously ripped to shreds.

I have strategically placed two pairs of shoes in places where it looks like they should belong.

Locations kittens will feel compelled to batter them about and displace them from. I left a couple of pens on the island in the kitchen for them to find and knock to the floor.

There’s the old shower curtain that I hung from the stairwell with the rings at just the right height for a young kitten to swipe at.

I can visualize Ryan running straight for that as soon as he arrives.

My bedroom has 4 pieces of old furniture I couldn’t find buyers for and hadn’t thrown away yet when I made the move here:

a chair, 2 futons, and a cheap love seat. Four pre-made cat beds complete with throw pillows.

Three walk-in closets all have horizontal shelves 6 feet above the ground.

Climbing challenges that I am eager to see how they manage to conquer. The pre-shredded weight bench offers additional shredding, batting, and scratching potential.

There’s the deceitfully inviting room of terror which is the master bathroom.

A cool room with stone floors and thick plush rugs, the unknown threat of water from numerous jets from the jacuzzi tub, the stand alone shower, and the double sink is bound to terrify any cat who confidently and arrogantly enters.

Lastly, should they survive the next 6 months, is the balcony of death they will obviously want to get on as soon as possible against my protestations. It offers a birds-eye view of downtown Houston in the distance. An active parking lot 20–25’ down offers viewing of people wandering in and out all day long from the businesses located below.

Beyond the barbed-wire fence and power lines, directly across the balcony of death obviously out of jumping range to any rational cat is the 75’ high radio tower that used to serve the radio station that formerly occupied this building. The final challenge for any cat ready to move on from this life to the next.

Markus’s Cat Dojo stands prepared to welcome and challenge Ryan Bryan (King Bryan) and Benryan Abigail (Queen Abigail).

Considering kittens don’t know what they can’t do, I believe they will make easy work of the evil spirit invading my life, finally vanquishing her to the netherworld this Monday evening.