northwrought:

I’m not misspelling procrastination, alright, I am a master wordsmith. But I’m totally unable to write while this story unfolds.

So my dad is a very smart, quite reserved man who loves animals. He maintains that he is not fond of our very needy cat, who is basically shaped like a feather boa with little stubby black fox feet. She’s stupidly long and soft and fluffy, and they are Not Friends.

Okay, guys? They are Not Friends. This will be important.

So she had a paralysis tick and gave everyone a scare, and while she’s recovering, she’s on The Good Shit and not particularly mobile. And still very needy. So she doesn’t want to be alone but can’t follow people around tripping them the fuck over or ambushing them with her fluffy body the second they sit down. So she takes to mewling sadly while in a collapsed puddle of fluff, her soft belly fur turned up in that weird cat-doughnut shape.

Okay, right. So I come to visit and this is sad. This is a sad thing to happen to a cat I love, so I pick her up. Wait, why is she still mewling? How curious. Am I not good enough for you, cat? Guided by rising or falling levels of purring, I find myself standing next to my dad. The mewling is now incessant. The cat is basically vibrating off my arms. My dad is looking especially reserved and pointedly looking away from me and this cat he Does Not Like and Has Never Liked, Thank You, No I Don’t Find Her Little Fox Stubs Adorable.

I place the cat on his shoulder, where she promptly shifts around until she’s basically a scarf draped around his neck and falls asleep drooling on his ear. Purring. My dad is still refusing to look at me at this stage, but it’s hard to pull off Stoic Man while be-catted.

“Dad,” I say. “Can’t help but notice that she’s only interested in hanging out with you.”

“Not my fault. Don’t even like this damn cat,” he says in a manful fashion, walking quickly off. Wearing his scarf-cat.

From her hysterical cries when someone tries to remove her, it quickly becomes apparent that the cat is only interested in being with my dad. She becomes inconsolable when she can’t see him and my dad, who you would think would be resistant to this, has taken to wearing her as a scarf-cat and lovingly hand-feeding her through her convalescence. There’s nothing stopped her from eating under her own power, just so you know.

Turns out they are actually Best Friends. My dad has been hiding this with remarkable consistency for almost a decade now. He’s been living a double life since we got her nine years ago. 

She’s totally fine now. He’s still wearing her like a scarf and if you give him a funny look about it, he will absolutely pretend he is not. This is the hill he will die on. Wearing our fluffy feather-boa cat around his neck.