When the Cat Knew Best

The **bull** had always been my dad's pride—massive, stubborn, impossible to move. But me? I'd moved from our Texas ranch to suburban California without putting up half the fight that stupid animal would've. Now I was seventeen and trying to figure out if I was more bull or bear in a world that felt completely foreign.

My only real friend here was Mrs. Chen's **cat**, a scrappy tabby named Lucky who hung out in our garage. Lucky didn't care that I still wore boots to school or that my **iPhone** stayed mostly silent while everyone else's blew up with group chats I wasn't part of.

"You'll **bear** with it," my mom said every morning, flipping her perfect fluffy pancakes while I missed her burnt ones from the ranch. "It just takes time."

Time was the problem. I didn't have time. Junior year was moving faster than a bull through a china shop, and I was still the new kid who said "y'all" unironically and didn't understand half the slang people threw around like confetti.

Then came the day Marcus sat next to me at lunch. Marcus, whose sneaker collection cost more than our first tractor.

"Your Instagram's... " He paused. "Different."

I stared at my **orange** juice carton. "Different how?"

"Like, you actually post pictures of sunsets. And fences. And... is that a cat?"

"That's Lucky. She lives in our garage."

Marcus smiled. "Cool. I've always wanted a cat. My mom's allergic."

We talked about cats. About how Lucky would hunt but never catch anything, how she'd sit on the hood of my dad's old truck like she owned it. I showed him pictures, and he showed me his favorite sneaker accounts. We discovered we both loved old country music—him ironically, me unironically.

"So," Marcus said as the bell rang. "Want to come over? My friend's band is practicing."

I looked down at my boots, then at his pristine Nikes. "Sure."

When I got home, I found Lucky sitting on the garage roof, watching the sunset like she'd been waiting for me to notice it all along.

"You knew," I told her. "You knew I just had to stop trying so hard."

The cat blinked slowly, as if to say: *Duh.*