Crazy cat lady?

If there’s one thing people would say to describe me, it is crazy cat lady. But how did I become a crazy cat lady?

The story starts when I was 7. Growing up in Turkey, I saw cats everywhere every single day. I really mean it… Turkey is known for the amount of street cats we have. 99% of the time, these cats are absolute gems and they love nothing more than getting pets from strangers.

My little cousin’s domesticated cat on the other hand… was quite the opposite. If she could talk, I am quite certain that she’d tell the entire world how much she hates my guts.
One day when went to visit my cousin and her family, the second they opened their front door to welcome me, their cat just jumped at me with her claws out.
I don’t know why she wanted me dead so badly but she continued to pester and bite and scratch me for the next 3 hours of my visit. And when I left my cousins home that day, I just knew I never wanted to touch a cat ever again.

This hatred I had for cats lasted until I was 20, when I moved in with my roommate Dini. Dini fostered around 7 cats a year (which I did not know when I agreed to move in with her). When I arrived at our new apartment for the first time I saw the little note that she left me, asking me to take care of her little foster while she was away for TWO FULL WEEKS.

TERRIFIED would be an understatement of how I felt for the first few days with that cat. I left the living room whenever he walked in, I avoided eye contact and never attempted to get in his personal space… until one day he just decided to come and sit on my lap.

And that was the day I realized I am the biggest cat person. And four years later, there is nothing I love more than being around cats. I foster around 2-5 cats a year myself and I am the go-to person for all my friend’s cat-sitting needs.

This week I am cat-sitting my friend’s cat Stanley. You can follow our adventures here!

I will give you some background information about Stanley and I’s adventures from this week’s module!

• Setting: Stanley will be staying with me in my apartment. This is the first time he is staying anywhere other than his dad’s (my friend) place.
• Character: Stanley is a rather shy boy. He is very skittish and definitely is having some separation anxiety as his dad never left him alone since he got adopted last year.
• Plot: You are about to find out if our story is a story of forever best friends or just distant acquaintances that will never hang our again.
• Conflict: I do not want to spoil our story… but can’t say Stanley likes me as much as he likes his dad.
• Arc: Our story goes from Stanley arriving at my place for the first time to his first night here.. All I can say is that it was not a smooth sailing for either of us.