Nicole Daniels & Penelope
If you had told me two years ago that I would be taking photographs with my kitten, Penelope, to be included in Girls and Their Cats I would have laughed...and maybe shuddered. I grew up being told cats were non-domesticated creatures who were killing off the bird population. I was therefore very disturbed that whenever I would go to a friend’s house with cats, the cat would always follow me around and rub up against me. It felt like they knew, and they were after me.
But then I met Serafina, a bold cat with grey fur and a tender heart. She had wandered miles from her home to my partner’s parents’ house in upstate New York. To my surprise and eventual delight, when I called her name she would run to me and purr in my arms. My heart was starting to soften to cats, and we were heartbroken when Serafina’s owners finally located her and took her home. When my two senior Shih Tzu dogs died last year, I started thinking about adopting a cat.
When my partner and I were ready to welcome a kitten home, the research began. I’m a virgo sun, cancer moon and rising, so I am most in my zone when preparing, organizing, nesting and caring. So as I prepared to adopt, I read books and tons of blogs, and started ordering the “best of” interactive toys, litter, food and scratching posts. A lot of people thought I was going overboard (“it’s just a cat”), but I needed to be as prepared as possible for my first foray in cat ownership.
Now, I’m living with a sweet, cuddly, and very mischievous kitten: Penelope. When she’s not bounding from one end of our apartment to the other, launching herself off of our furniture, playing in the kitchen sink, and hiding all of our small objects under the couch, she’s in our arms purring herself to sleep.
We found Penelope through Miss Pat’s Cats, a Black-owned New Jersey-based nonprofit, and were able to meet Little P virtually. We could tell right away that she was the one: her foster mom did an incredible job socializing her and she clearly wanted to cuddle and always be involved in the action. We brought Penelope home on July 21 and she was immediately cuddling up to us, engaging in interactive play and checking everything out.
“Even at seven-months-old, she still sprints around the apartment multiple times a day, attempts to dig up our plants, knocks any small object off the table, and loves playing hunting games with us (as in, we hide and she hunts us).”
After a few weeks, Penelope made our home her own and blossomed into her fully active and curious self. She can be a handful, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Penelope was easy to clicker train and comes to her name (she even meows in response), but she also likes nontraditional forms of fun. She taught us how to play fetch with her and even started running in our empty washing machine like it’s a treadmill, which gained her TikTok fame. Even at seven-months-old, she still sprints around the apartment multiple times a day, attempts to dig up our plants, knocks any small object off the table, and loves playing hunting games with us (as in, we hide and she hunts us).
We have tried to make our home as friendly to her active personality as possible by installing cat shelves, making ball pits out of old boxes and taking her up to the roof on a leash for walks. We tried to expose her to everything early on by giving her full body “massages,” giving her baths, trimming her nails frequently and taking her on trips in the car. She’s now a confident and comfortable (sometimes too comfortable) cat.
And I, in turn, am fully a cat lady. I spend hours each week reading about feline nutrition and researching the stages of kitten development. I am now the person who tries to coax any hiding cat out from under a bed and greets all the cats of our neighborhood. I even stopped mid-run the other week because I saw a teeny-tiny kitten hobbling across the street. After he hid in a tire well, I realized he was injured and lost. I spent several hours working with neighbors to rescue him and I’m happy to say he now is safe and thriving in a cozy home in our neighborhood.
So, it can happen. You can go from shuddering at friendly cats to rescuing kittens off the street. You just might need the right cat to fall in love with.
Nicole Daniels is an actor and writer living in Brooklyn. She spends her days as a Staff Editor for The New York Times Learning Network where she writes content for teachers and students. Nicole has spent the pandemic perfecting her recipe for gluten-free buttermilk biscuits, learning TikTok dances to Megan Thee Stallion and perfecting her impersonation of Claire Foy’s Queen Elizabeth.