I found Nate on an enclosed back porch where five carriers were lined up on a table. Each one had a Polaroid of a cat taped to it, a name written in clean block lettering beneath: RAZZY. CESAR. BLU. MARGIE. LYLE.

“So this is a shelter or something?” I asked.

“Sabrina takes in cats that can’t get placed,” he said, picking up two of the carriers and carrying them into the living room. “You know, ones that are sick or older. The unwanted and abandoned, as it were.” He grabbed one of the Polaroids, of a thin gray cat—RAZZY, apparently—then glanced around the room. “You see this guy anywhere?”

We both looked around the room, where there were several cats but no gray ones. “Better hit upstairs,” Nate said. “Can you look around for the others? Just go by the pictures on the carriers.”

He left the room, jogging up the stairs. A moment later, I heard him whistling, the ceiling creaking as he moved around above. I looked at the row of carriers and the Polaroids attached, then spotted one of them, a black cat with yellow eyes—LYLE—watching me from a nearby chair. As I picked up the carrier, the picture flipped up, exposing a Post-it that was stuck to the back.

Lyle will be getting a checkup and blood drawn to monitor how he’s responding to the cancer drugs. If Dr. Loomis feels they are not making a difference, please tell him to call me on my cell phone to discuss if there is further action to take, or whether I should just focus on keeping him comfortable.

“Poor guy,” I said, positioning the carrier in front of him, the door open. “Hop in, okay?”

He didn’t. Even worse, when I went to nudge him forward, he reached out, swiping at me, his claws scraping across my skin.

I dropped the carrier, which hit the floor, the open door banging against it. Looking down at my hand, I could already see the scratches, beads of blood rising up in places. “You little shit,” I said. He just stared back at me, as if he’d never moved at all.

“Oh, man,” Nate said, coming around the corner carrying two cats, one under each arm. “You went after Lyle?”

“You said to get them,” I told him.

“I said to look,” he said. “Not try to wrangle. Especially that one—he’s trouble. Let me see.”

He reached over, taking my hand and peering down at it to examine the scratches. His palm was warm against the underside of my wrist, and as he leaned over it I could see the range of color in his hair falling across his forehead, which went from white blond to a more yellow, all the way to almost brown.

“Sorry,” he said. “I should have warned you.”

“I’m okay. It’s just a little scrape.”

He glanced up at me, and I felt my face flush, suddenly even more aware of how close we were to each other. Over his shoulder, Lyle was watching, the pupils of his yellow eyes widening, then narrowing again.

In the end, it took Nate a full twenty minutes to get Lyle in the carrier and to the car, where I was waiting with the others. When he finally slid behind the wheel, I saw his hands were covered with scratches.

“I hope you get combat pay,” I said as he started the engine.

“I don’t scar, at least,” he replied. “And anyway, you can’t really blame the guy. It’s not like he’s ever been given a reason to like the vet.”

I just looked at him as we pulled away from the curb. From behind us, someone was already yowling. “You know,” I said, “I just can’t get behind that kind of attitude.”

Nate raised his eyebrows, amused. “You can’t what?”

“The whole positive spin—the “oh, it’s not the cat’s fault he mauled me” thing. I mean, how do you do that?”

“What’s the alternative?” he asked. “Hating all creatures? ”

“No,” I said, shooting him a look. “But you don’t have to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.”

“You don’t have to assume the worst about everyone, either. The world isn’t always out to get you.”

“In your opinion,” I added.

“Look,” he said, “the point is there’s no way to be a hundred percent sure about anyone or anything. So you’re left with a choice. Either hope for the best, or just expect the worst.”

“If you expect the worst, you’re never disappointed,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, but who lives like that?”

I shrugged. “People who don’t get mauled by psycho cats.”

“Ah, but you did,” he said, pointing at me. “So clearly, you aren’t that kind of person. Even if you want to be.”

After the group vet appointment—during which Lyle scratched the vet, the vet tech, and some poor woman minding her own business in the waiting room—we went back to Sabrina’s and re-released the cats to their natural habitat. From there, we hit the dry-cleaners (where we collected tons of suits and dress shirts), the pharmacy (shocking how many people were taking antidepressants, not that I was judging), and One World—the organic grocery store— where we picked up a special order of a wheat-, eggs-, and gluten-free cake, the top of which read HAPPY FORTIETH, MARLA!

“Forty years without wheat or eggs?” I said as we carried it up the front steps of a big house with columns in the front. “That’s got to suck.”

“She doesn’t eat meat, either,” he told me, pulling out a ring of keys and flipping through them. When he found the one he was looking for, he stuck it in the lock, pushing the door open. “Or anything processed. Even her shampoo is organic.”