During university, I’ll admit: I did a lot of weird, out of character things. One time, I stole Santa Claus and hid him on campus. I’d go lay out on Chapel Hill and watch the stars when I couldn’t sleep, sometimes till the wee hours of the night. I often tried new things and much to my dismay, liking them was a hit of a miss. And a lot of the time, it didn’t take too long before I realized how much I really disliked something. But the time my roommate and I adopted a kitten and hid it from residence life for a week was definitely not something I regret doing.
One of my best friends in the whole world, Kelsey, and I were and still are (if only I didn’t live so far away) partners in crime. The only thing I ever regret about my friendship with her is not knowing her sooner. Usually, people could find us with a candle burning, music playing in our apartment, and in the kitchen messing around with some new recipe for sangria or food one of us had found. But one day in the middle of winter, we found ourselves in a pet store. We’d gone out for food and wound up looking at the little kittens in the adoption center.
Both of us love cats, which is funny because I am mildly allergic but still adore them all the same. We eyed the cats, talking about the cutest one, until we came across one of the smallest of the bunch. He was a little orange and white kitten that barely fit in both of our hands. We made the grave mistake of holding him, feeling him in our arms as he relaxed and stared up at us with his big eyes. Everyone with a pet or a love of animals knows one thing about going to pet stores: you never ever visit with a dog or cat, because when you do, you end up going home with them. And that’s exactly what happened: we took our new little friend home.
It was the middle of winter and we called our third roommate for some help to give us a ride, because Pittsburgh in the middle of winter is not even a sliver of welcoming to a small baby kitten like our new companion was. But she said she wasn’t going to come. So we tucked him into our jackets, doing our best to shield him from the frozen winds of winter, and made the twenty minute trek home. By the time we got home, all three of us were shivering and the apartment heaters were immediately turned on.
Our third roommate was less than pleased with the decision, thinking it was a cat for our apartment and thought we mistakenly didn’t ask her to come and help us pick out a kitten, but Marc’s stay with us was just temporary. And technically, he was Kelsey’s parents’ kitten, not ours. We were just kitten sitting. He’d be returning to her parents’ house, where he’d join his then eight brothers and sisters. Together, Kelsey and I brainstormed names. And then we decided: Marc Andre Purry. First, because duh, it’s like Marc Andre Fleury, former goalie for the Pittsburgh Penguins. And second because he was the cutest damn thing in the world.
The entire time Marc crashed with us, he slept in Kelsey’s room and was barely the size of a 32 oz water bottle. When he was feeling energetic, he’d find his way up onto the couch and bury his body in between your shoulder blade and your neck, purring as he did so and taking away any ill moods you had left in you. That little kitten was the cutest thing I’d ever seen, and he was still an absolute angel when I went to see everyone in Pittsburgh in June. Now, Marc Andre Purry resides in Pittsburgh, where he plays and lounges alongside his best friend Sidney Clawsby, also named after the infamous hockey player Sidney Crosby.
By the time Kelsey’s parents came to pick up Marc, we were all sad to see him go. If it wasn’t against a pretty basic residence life rule at our university, I think both of us would have happily kept Marc there as long as could. Who wouldn’t want a cute little kitten to cuddle you all the time and keep you company while you read your economics textbook?
