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“It means she can’t hear.”
“Why?”
“She was born that way. A lot of white cats with blue eyes are.”
“Oh. What’s mute?”
“It means she can’t meow, either.”
Paige lingered at Angel’s kennel, wishing she could adopt the little cat, but with a single-pet policy in the apartment complex she lived in, it wasn’t possible. Still, she couldn’t walk away, and she and Jacob were still petting Angel when David appeared, having finished filling out all the required adoption paperwork for the black cat.
“Did you make a friend?” David asked.
Paige could see that while he seemed to be asking about the cat, his focus was centered on Jacob perched on her hip, his arm around her shoulder.
She nodded. “If I could, I’d take her,” she said. “I’m sure she won’t get adopted since she’s deaf and mute.”
“That means she can’t hear or meow,” Jacob explained helpfully.
David smiled and ruffled the top of Jacob’s head, then told them before Trick-or-Treat could be taken home, they needed to go buy a bunch of cat supplies for him first, so off they went to the nearest PetSmart. It took longer than planned, since Jacob wanted to be in charge of picking out the toys, which entailed looking at every single one. When they were finally done, they headed back to the shelter to pick up Trick-or-Treat and then drove to David’s place. On the way, Jacob fell asleep in his car seat, so David ended up carrying the little boy upstairs and laying him on the couch, before unloading all the cat supplies with Paige’s help, including a cat tree to go in front of the living room window.
The loft was a little cluttered this time, and Paige took in all the sweet reminders that a child lived there—shoes by the door, crayons and coloring books on the kitchen table—along with the Rubik’s cube that showed signs of being worked on.
“That was the best gift ever,” David told her. “Whenever he goes into hyper mode, I put that in his hands, and it keeps him occupied for at least thirty minutes.”
Paige glanced over at Jacob, crashed on the couch with Trick-or-Treat staring down from one of the arm rests, and felt the perfection of the moment.
Then, because the bags of cat supplies wouldn’t get put away on their own, they got busy setting up the cat box in the laundry room, putting out the new bowls for food and water, and unwrapping the numerous cat toys. As they worked, Paige paused for a moment to reach over and release David’s hair from his man-bun, running her fingers through it a few times to straighten the shoulder-length strands. “That’s better,” she murmured, before going back to what she’d been doing.
A few hours later, after David and Jacob dropped Paige off at her place and she was getting ready to do a load of laundry, she decided she was going back for Angel, because screw the one-cat rule, especially since the second cat would be mute. Paige raced to the shelter and when she got to Angel’s cage, there was another cat in it. She quickly flagged down one of the volunteers to ask about Angel, only to be told she’d been adopted.
Even though Paige was thrilled at the news, she returned home, disappointed. To take her mind off the little white cat, she texted David.
PAIGE: How’s Trick-or-Treat? Is he settling in?
DAVID: And then some. He’s pretty much taken over the place, like any self-respecting cat would.
PAIGE: Naturally.
DAVID: By the way, he really digs his cool name.
PAIGE: I’m glad.
DAVID: Speaking of cool names … do you think you can come up with one more?
PAIGE: Well … since I’m the Name Whisperer, I probably can, but why?
DAVID: I need one for her.
An image popped up and Paige stared at it. It was a picture of Angel being held by a smiling Jacob.
A second later, she received a FaceTime request from David.
“Are you kidding? You’re the one who adopted her?” she asked, after accepting the request.
“You knew she got adopted?”
“I went back to get her a half hour ago and she was gone. They told me she’d been adopted, and I was crushed. Why did you go get her?”
