From Cat Adoption Event to Forever Home, by Paul Max Payton

You can spot my car in any lot by the magnets plastered on it: “My children have four paws,” “I ❤️ my cat,” and “Catitude.” I would have added “Who adopted whom?” if they’d only gotten the grammar right. (They have “who” ─ Ugh.)

This is the story of how adoption saves lives and how my life changed because of the affection of two very special cats.

It began on a cold, gray January day in 2011. My wife Patty and I were in Berkeley, doing our usual rounds of books and stationery, when we passed a cat adoption event. In the middle of it all, a tricolor tabby locked eyes with me ─ curious, insistent. His name was Nik, four months old and, as the adoption folks admitted, already “getting too old” for much interest. Over coffee, Patty and I weighed the pros and cons, and in the end, we decided he was coming home with us. The rescue group made sure we didn’t leave without his brother too, a mocha tabby named Murray. “They’ll keep each other company,” they said. And so, for three hundred dollars and a cardboard box rattling with mews, we drove back to San Carlos with two new lives in our care.

Keeping Up with Our New Little Friends

Our home backed onto North Crestview Park  ─ four wild acres full of deer, jackrabbits, lizards, and field mice. Picturesque, yes, but soon we learned what that meant. Within weeks, we came home one evening to find Nik batting around what looked like a toy. It wasn’t. He had caught and killed a mouse, with a skill and relish that left no doubt he was a born hunter. That night was the first of more than fifty confirmed kills. Nik became the assassin, Murray the accomplice. Murray would cut off escape routes and play with the prey until it tired, and then Nik would deliver the final blow. Often the body ended up beside my bed, a proud gift from my boy.

And the boys were never short on ingenuity. Nik once figured out how to open the garage door: up on his hind legs, paws on the latch, claws hooking just so until he could pull it open enough to slip through. After that, we learned to lock up unless we wanted to find them strutting around in places they didn’t belong.

I kept pace with them by building what I called a “cognitive playground” ─ tunnels, scratching posts, jingle balls, even tennis balls soaked in catnip (“MouseBalls”). A custom condo rose up in the living room like a monument. Laser pointers and feather wands? Too ordinary. I wanted steeplechases, obstacle courses, cat-sized adventures. Nik and Murray were not passive pets. They were fixtures of the household, and they demanded invention.

Life, of Course, Changed

Patty and I grew apart, and she left in 2016. By 2019 the marriage was officially over, but the boys stayed. That’s one lesson cats teach better than anyone: they don’t leave you. They don’t weigh affection against your mistakes. Feed them, clean the box, rub their bellies, tell them you love them, and you’ll have loyalty as steady as breathing.

Nik passed away in June 2025, at fourteen. Kidney failure, sudden and cruel. I wept harder for him than I did for my own mother. And in the long nights after, I realized why. Human love is rarely free of conditions. Animal love is. They love without pretense, without calculation, with empathy sharper than we give them credit for. Nik gave me that kind of love every day of his life.

Murray is still here, fifteen now. He responds to his name, to “little kitty,” even to “cat.” He loves to flop over after a tail kiss, stretching himself wide and demanding belly rubs. When I indulge him, he arches his back into what I call the “Super Kitty” pose, like he’s about to take flight. Afterwards he marks everything in reach with his face, claiming it all  ─ including me. If I shower, he meows until I emerge, then hops in the tub to lap up the droplets. At night, he curls against my back, a warm, purring weight. On a winter night, nothing is more comforting.

They’ve inspired poems, filled my photo albums, and even served as test subjects for my image-processing algorithms. They are, in every way that matters, my children ─ just without the orthodontist bills or tuition fees.

“Who adopted whom?” turns out to be not just grammatically correct but true. I rescued them back in 2011, but they’ve rescued me every day since.