t is raining when I pick up the cat from L.’s place—crazy, end-of-the-world rain coming down diagonally. I stuff the cat in the carrier, muttering apologies to him as I smoosh in his stubborn head, detach his claws from where they cling. I feel like a thief, tip-toeing into an empty house in the middle of the day and smuggling a kitty to New York. Ha. That’s me: Cat burglar.

On the way to the airport, I tell the cat what’s happening. My mother has suggested this for some reason. I speak like an overeager parent trying to school a toddler. “We have a big adventure ahead of us,” I say, “It will be long, but it will be worth it.” He smashes his head up against the cold metal of the carrier, trying to push it open. “We’re going to have a new life together,” I tell him. “A life of cardboard and cat nip.” A warm, nutty smell fills the car. Great: He is pissing in the carrier. He hates to travel. Hates the baffling motion and noise. When we arrive at the airport, I press my face up against the cage , my fingers straining through the bars to pet his soft orange fur. “I love you,” I whisper. He stares up at me and meows. I know what he's thinking: You suck.

***

When you walk through the airport with a cat, people feel compelled to comment. When you walk through the airport with my cat, everyone’s comment is the same: “He’s so big!” I flinch when they say this. “He’s just big-boned,” I want to tell them. But he is big; my arms ache from carrying him through the maze of DFW. I set him down, finally, inside a crowded monorail. “You and I are going to have a serious talk about your diet,” I say, massaging my sore shoulder. He stares off in other directions, sniffing the air, wild with smells. The sopping yellow towel inside the carrier has been exchanged for one of L.’s old undershirts. The familiarity has calmed him.

“He’s so big!” says the woman beside me, crouching to peer inside. “And he’s so cute.”

Also true: He is a handsome cat. Sometimes, I see other cats and feel sorry for them that they aren’t as handsome as my cat. This makes me feel bad. Would I love him less if he were ugly? What kind of a narcissist am I? But I can’t help it; other cats seem so anemic, so pale and lidless. He is exactly the kind of cat I would choose for myself: Good-looking but strapping, soft but not the least bit prissy. On the first night L. and I spent in our new house, he killed a rat and left it bloody and decapitated beside our bed—an offering. Still, he cuddled with me that night when we slept.

I didn’t choose him, by the way. I didn’t even used to like him. But after three years, we had routines. We had history. I had developed a fierce, unshakeable love for him that made me understand, for once, all the stupid, gushing people in the world who talk and write and blog and take pictures of their pets. Their behavior—which I had once considered so annoying, so irrational—finally mirrored my own.

When L. and I broke up, we disagreed about many things, but not this: “We both know he’s your cat,” he told me. “Take him to New York.”

***

My veterinarian friend has given me pills to calm him on the plane. Once aboard, however, he will not stop meowing. We are on the last row of a packed flight, delayed by rain, and his cries ricochet through the silent, impatient aircraft.

“His meds should be kicking in any minute,” I say to my neighbor, loud enough for everyone around us to hear. But I’m wrong. As the plane rockets along the runway toward takeoff, he starts to panic. Meowing, bug-eyed, clawing at the plastic. A terrible flyer who white-knuckles every hour, I have never been on a plane with someone more afraid than me. At least it offers new anxieties: Instead of worrying about the plane in a flaming, spiraling descent, I obsess about my cat dying of a heart attack. Even as the plane bucks and shudders, stewardesses knocked around in the aisle, I am not concerned with us, but with him. He’s breathing so fast it hurts me. When the air smooths out, I rummage through my overhead bag for the pills, wondering, not entirely a joke: Is there one for me, too?

***

Before I picked him up, I wondered if he would remember me. It had been five months. Would he know who I was? Would he remember our routines? How I cared for him, poured his food, changed his water, scratched extra long and hard behind his ears? It occurred to me that he could be unhappy here. No grass to escape into and chew. No balcony to sit on and enjoy the sun. Nothing, really, but scant furniture and me.

It is close to 11pm when we arrive at my apartment. After 10 hours cramped and hunkered down, he climbs out of the carrier. “Here it is,” I say, motioning grandly. “Your new home.”

He pads around the house, sniffing everything. The chair. The corner of a table. The ground. As he explores, I run to the corner store and pick up something to celebrate: Beer and wet food.

Back when I lived with L., the cat and I ended each day with the same ritual. When I climbed into bed, I would make a clucking noise and the cat would come scurrying into the bedroom and lie down my chest, picking his claws in the sheets before settling down. Few things can make me so happy as this.

Tonight, as I crawl under the covers, I call to him. He pads into my bedroom, tentatively. Tchk-tchk-tchk, I say, and he stares long and hard before hopping onto the bed. Slowly, he maneuvers himself on top of me—settling on my stomach, where he is warm and familiar. “Thank you for coming to live with me,” I say, scratching behind his ears. He leans in to my hand and, after only a few moments, his eyes flutter closed. He is exhausted. And he is home.