The Animals We Feed

The cat peered through my bedroom window at 3 AM, golden eyes glowing like judgment. I knew what she wanted. But I wasn't giving in tonight.

"You're pathetic," I told the stray, who'd basically moved in last month when my parents announced they were separating. "You think showing up here every night fixes anything?"

The cat blinked slowly, unimpressed by my teenage angst.

My phone buzzed. Marcus: you coming??

Right. The party. The one where Chloe would be. The one I'd been thinking about all week.

I crept downstairs, past the living room where my dad's suitcases still sat unpacked, into the garage where the dog waited. Not a real dog — my beat-up Honda, the one Marcus had nicknamed because it "made dying animal noises when you accelerated." Funny thing was, he wasn't wrong.

The dog wheezed to life at 3:15 AM. I was running.

Not because I wanted to. Because Chloe had DM'd me yesterday: "save me a dance??" with that freaking smirk emoji that had been living rent-free in my head since freshman orientation. And now I was sixteen and still overthinking every interaction, still letting people-pleasing run my life like it had some kind of VIP access.

The party was everything I hated: red cups, bass you could feel in your teeth, people shouting over each other like volume was the same as connection. I spotted Chloe immediately, laughing at something Jake said, her hand on his arm like she'd forgotten our conversation entirely.

My stomach did that thing where it simultaneously dropped and tried to crawl up my throat.

Then I saw him.

The guy from my English class. The one who always sat in the back, never spoke. Leo. He was standing alone by the back door, holding a cat — a tiny calico kitten that looked like it had seen better days.

Our eyes met. Something in his expression shifted.

"Found her behind the dumpster," he said, like we were already in conversation. "She was shaking. Think she got separated from her mom."

"You brought a cat to a party?" I asked, and the corner of his mouth twitched.

"Wasn't gonna leave her there."

We spent the next hour on the back porch, sharing earbuds and watching the kitten fall asleep on his hoodie. He told me about his rescue dog, a senior chihuahua mix with anxiety that hated thunderstorms. I told him about the stray who'd been haunting my window since my parents dropped their bombshell.

"You feed her?" he asked.

"Every night," I admitted. "But I pretend I don't care."

Leo nodded like this made perfect sense. "The animals we pretend not to love are the ones that change us most."

Chloe never did dance with me. But I got Leo's number, and when I got home at dawn, the cat was still waiting.

I filled the bowl without overthinking it for once. Some things aren't as complicated as we make them.