Where cats roll dice and drink milk from paper bags

As he darted away from me, I feared my cat BFF would end up on the wrong side of a dark alley, but then something unexpected happened.

Illustration by Marian Runk

He looked at me. I looked at him. He looked at me again. And then he jumped.

My cat’s leash and harness, I realized then, were conveniently in my hand instead of on his small furry frame (yes, I said cat leash), crappy flip-flops were on my feet, and I was flying through the air over six brownstone steps, certain of several things including the incredulous stares from our neighbors and the likelihood of a sprained ankle in my very near future. But above all, I was sure of one thing: my fiancée would become my ex and they’d never find my body if I let our cat run away during one of our thrice-weekly “crazy walks.” And to think, I was always the dog person in our relationship.

Under normal circumstances on a normal day—because all of this is clearly quite normal—I’d put the thin blue leash and miniature black Velcro harness on Tanner before actually leaving the apartment. But this was early September 2012, a few days after launching Narratively, and I was, shall…