There are three stories in our family anthology that the children frequently ask to hear: The First Time We Saw Poppy; The First Time We Saw Pete; and The First Time We Saw Marsha.

This is the story of The First Time We Saw Marsha.

It was 2002 or so. We had just moved from our first apartment into a duplex, where we were allowed to have pets of the furry variety. (We had a fish named Gil, and he was a good fish. But he was not cuddly.) Rockford is not a Dog Person, and I wasn’t ready to sign on for all of the responsibilities that a dog requires anyway. So we agreed to get a cat.

I spent a good amount of time searching the internet for kittens. (This is a habit I have retained to this day. The internet is, after all, built on kittens.) After a few weeks, I found an animal rescue in St. Louis that had a litter of kittens. They were too small to adopt immediately, which meant that we’d have time to collect the necessaries. The kittens were in a foster home, so we made arrangements with the family to stop by to see the kittens.

I don’t remember much about the family or the house, but I do remember that they put baby gates up to contain the kitties. There were seven of them, all small enough to hold in your hand. Greg, Marsha, Peter, Jan, Cindy, Bobby and Alice. We sat down in the middle of the floor, and we watched the kittens run around the room, stumbling and tumbling over each other and us.

Except for the littlest one of all. She didn’t run around or tumble or stumble. She walked over to Rockford, crawled into his lap and curled up for a snooze.

And that is how Marsha T. Cat chose us.