I could hear the phone ringing on the other side of the house. “I’ll get it,” my daughter yelled, much to my relief. And, I imagine, much to the relief of my crowd.

“She’s around here somewhere,” Celeste said to the caller. “It’s always easy to find her. I just look for all the animals.”

She opened the door. “I found her. She’s under the cats.”

I wondered if my caller was envisioning a mechanic with felines hoisted in the air like a car on a lift. Or perhaps a pair of flailing arms, struggling out from under a mountain of cats. The latter is actually not far wrong, and although three cats hardly constitute a mountain, none of my cats are of average size.

Lately, I’ve been spending more time than usual underneath cats. We recently added a third to our crew. More correctly, I finally gave in and agreed he was ours. Sully had been the neighborhood cat for a while, a large and longhaired black beauty with bright yellow eyes. He’d once lived in a tree house, but after it burned down, moved to our porch.

It didn’t take long to learn what made our porch more appealing than others. Ours had a little girl who would wrap him in warm towels while feeding him ham.

I tried not to get attached, and for a long time, I didn’t. For someone who can bond with an animal from only a picture the size of a stamp, it wasn’t easy for me. The cat had its charms.

Unfortunately, the ability to play well with others wasn’t one of those charms. I learned this after allowing him to weather a storm inside our house. Instead of accepting our hospitality with humility and grace, he viewed it as an opportunity to stage a coup, to violently overturn the current regime so he could foist his fluffy butt onto the throne. (The throne in this case being a carpeted cat platform in our back window.)

After the storm, out Sully went. And out Sully stayed, until the weather got cold.

(I suppose I should pause here to mention that during the time Sully was ousted and the time it got cold, I talked my editor, Rosalie, into taking him home. It was not a good match. Rosalie soon returned him to me–Sully appeared none the worse for the trip, but Rosalie brandished striped forearms and claimed of being a few pints short of blood.)

So Sully was back on my porch in his little PetSmart cat house, aiming those big eyes oh so effectively at me every chance that he could. Before long, he’d convinced me to clean out our little sunroom and give it to him. (After his failed coup, I suspect he spent his months in exile carefully planning his next move.)

With the advantage of the sunroom’s flimsy door, it was easy for Sully to gain frequent access to the rest of the house. Once in, he’d entertain us by batting rolls of masking tape and stray hair bands all over the floor. And although we were charmed, he still didn’t play nice. There was much hissing, spitting and swatting. Sometimes even involving the cats.

And then something unexpected happened. Sully fell in love.

With me.

I knew he’d always liked and trusted me more than others, but over the past few weeks, it became more than that. He started following me, being gentle with me, but most of all, not attacking my other cats because he could tell it upset me. (Animals are sensitive to such things, you know. Especially when such things include shrieking and an undignified dumping back out on the porch.)

We seem to be settling into something nice, but it still isn’t smooth. My original two cats, apparently wanting to make certain they maintain their rank, have taken to stalking me, immediately attaching themselves to any part of me that becomes horizontal. My dog, a lifelong lover of cats, goes along with the crowd. Cats, he understands, know the best places to sleep.

And these days, that best place is on me.

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