Momo’s Arrival
It should have been obvious from the beginning that Momo was never really a cat.
Julian first found her in the spring rain behind a convenience store, glaring at him like he had personally offended her by existing.
She was a small gray cat with soft white markings at her ears and tail, soaked through and shivering, though she was trying very hard to look dignified about it. One front paw was tucked up against her chest. Her fur had clumped into wet spikes.
Her eyes were strange, luminous and hard to miss in the blue glare of the alley light. They followed his every movement with obvious suspicion.
He crouched slowly, grocery bag hanging from one wrist.
“Hey,” he said. “You look like you’ve had a rough night.”
The cat flattened her ears.
“Sorry,” Julian amended. “That was rude of me. You look terrifying and powerful and definitely not like you need help.”
Her ears came up again and Julian smiled.
It had been a terrible week. His apartment was in shambles, his job at the architecture firm had become a blur of revisions, and his ex had just moved the last of her things out that morning.
He had not intended to adopt anything. He had only gone out that evening for frozen dumplings, eggs, and something sweet enough to knock the edge off a miserable Thursday.
Then he saw the gray little fur ball.
He opened the grocery bag, took out the rotisserie chicken he had bought on impulse, and peeled off a strip.
The cat’s eyes widened.
“There it is,” Julian murmured.
She tried to maintain her princess-like dignity for exactly three seconds before limping forward and snatching the chicken from his hand.
He laughed softly.
By the time the rain worsened into a hard outpour, he had coaxed her into the passenger seat of his car with the rest of the chicken.
When they reached his apartment, she had curled into the towel he’d set in the seat and fallen asleep with one paw over her nose as if she had always meant to come home with him.
He named her Momo two days later. In truth, she looked too regal to be a Momo. It was as if she walked out of ancient Egypt, wondering where her worshippers had gone.
But the name slipped out anyway when he caught her trying to steal a dumpling off his plate with all the stealth of a tiny criminal.
“Momo,” he said, catching her gently around the middle. “You little menace.”
She went still in his hands.
Then she made the smallest sound—a soft, offended mrp—and Julian laughed so hard he nearly dropped his chopsticks.
After that, the name stayed.
Momo adapted to apartment life with suspicious speed. She discovered the sunny spot on the couch by the window, the exact cabinet where Julian kept treats, and the infuriating power of demanding entry at his bedroom door at three in the morning.
She preferred sleeping directly on his chest, paws tucked beneath her like a loaf of bread, her tail draped across his ribs with possessive finality.
If he tried to move her, she would blink at him once, slowly, and settle harder.
“You are the most spoiled cat I’ve ever met,” Julian told her one Sunday morning, half buried under a blanket and a cat.
Momo blinked again.
He scratched between her ears.
Her eyes drifted closed. A low purr vibrated through his sternum.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “That’s what I thought.”
She was, he learned, strangely expressive for a cat. She would follow him from room to room with grave concern, sit on his laptop during work-from-home days, and watch him cook with an intensity that bordered on theatrical.
She hated when he would cook vegetables, was fascinated by the red blinking light on the smoke detector, and would swat at spiders with offended precision before looking around as if expecting applause.
Momo also had a deeply shameless love of steak.
The first time he made it, she had gone entirely still in the kitchen doorway, every line of her body alert.
Julian looked over his shoulder and burst out laughing.
Momo’s eyes had gone round and bright, fixed on the skillet with devotion.
“Oh, no,” he said. “You can’t look at me like that. That’s emotional manipulation.”
Momo sat. Then, for emphasis, she lifted one paw delicately and placed it against his leg.
Julian had ended up slicing a portion into tiny pieces and setting it in a bowl on the counter.
“Enjoy your spoils, you spoiled little thing.”
Momo inhaled it with such unrestrained joy that he had laughed until tears pricked his eyes.
He got used to talking to her as though she belonged in every conversation.
That was probably the strangest part—not that he talked, but that it felt less like talking to a pet and more like speaking to someone who understood perfectly and merely chose not to answer.
When he came home late and tired, he told her about difficult clients, irrational deadlines, stupid emails, and the loneliness that still lingered in the apartment.
She sat beside him on the couch and listened with her tail wrapped around her paws, or curled into his lap and purred until the knot between his shoulders loosened.
It was easy, in a way that frightened him a little. He had no hesitation when it came time to buy the expensive salmon treats or overpriced plush beds.
He would even catch himself smiling at his phone because the pet camera app showed Momo asleep in a patch of sun, one paw over her face.
Momo was easy to love. Growing up he’d had a cat named Bear, but Bear was a little more difficult to love. He came with scratches to his ankles, ruined upholstery and a mean attitude. Julian loved him anyway, but not in the way that he grew to love Momo.
He never thought too hard about how much she seemed to love him back. She was only a cat, after all.
