Larry Ritchie has never seen himself as a cat person.
He and his girlfriend were wandering around their local SPCA about a month ago when she asked him many times whether he would be willing to adopt a cat. He always answered no, but one of the kittens at the shelter on that particular day had different ideas.
Nirvana had been abandoned with her siblings in a crate outside the shelter when she was just a few months old. When the shelter’s employees got to know her, they discovered she didn’t like being held and was a bit nervous around new people, but that all changed when she met Ritchie and his girlfriend.
“At first, she was apprehensive because we had heard she didn’t enjoy being picked up,” Ritchie told us. “She agreed to let us pick her up, and they commented on how odd that was.”
Nirvana warmed up to the couple as soon as she met them, and everyone who had dealt with the kitty and knew her disposition was taken aback.
“As the lady asked, ‘How?’ she sat and purred in my lap.” ‘She won’t be held by anybody!’ “I knew I wanted her at that point,” Ritchie explained.
Despite Nirvana’s best efforts to persuade Ritchie to rethink his attitude about cats, he and his girlfriend left the shelter without her — but Ritchie quickly realized he’d made a mistake, and she was intended to be their kitten.
“At first, I felt like there was a lot more to deal with at home, and I wasn’t sure whether the duty would be too much for us to bear,” Ritchie said. “However, I changed my mind on the way home from the shelter.”
The couple phoned the shelter to let them know they still wanted to adopt Nirvana, then waited for a response, hoping for good news. They prayed they weren’t too late, but Nirvana was always destined to be their cat, as it turned out.
“‘I have bad news and good news,’ [my girlfriend] had said. “The bad news is that the cat was adopted today,” Ritchie added, “and I was a little concerned since we were waiting to hear back from the shelter.” “However, when she said, ‘The good news is that it was by us,’ I was ecstatic and felt it was the sweetest surprise ever.”
The couple hurried back to the shelter to claim their new family member, and Nirvana not only recognized them, but she was just as happy to see them as they were to see her.
“Even after I scooped her up, she wouldn’t stop meowing,” Ritchie added.
