Since I moved in with Mister Husband two and a half years ago, we’ve been petless. This is the first time in my life that I’ve been without dogs and cats, since I grew up with at least a couple of each running around. I am bereft, particularly dog-wise.

Our current apartment has a no-dogs lease. People ask me why I don’t get a cat. Occasionally we talk about getting a cat. The reason I haven’t yet is because any cat we get will become Mister Husband’s cat. Don’t get me wrong, I get along with cats just fine. But Mister Husband is particularly ... attuned to them. Where other people have tales of of the good ol’ dog they grew up with, he has kitty tales. If we’re eating at a truck stop during one of our summer odysseys, a stray cat will come up to the window next to us. If we’re at someone’s house and they say, “Oh, we have three cats. Two are friendly, and one you’ll never see because he hides upstairs,” the hiding cat will be sitting on his lap before the hour is up. He even gets along with Cockroach Kitty* at my parent’s house — a cat that none of us has ever liked or understood for the 18 years or so she’s lived there.

So I knew he was the Pied Piper of Cats, but I found out today that I had misunderestimated him. Today, we went to the Como Park Conservatory and Zoo. Primates, buffalo, zebras, giraffes, wolves. And the Big Cats. We wandered up to the cougar separately, and I said hi to it first. It looked at me in the usual Big Cat way and stomped off. Then it went directly over to Mister Husband and started chatting away. I didn’t even know that cougars talked to people, and it had an oddly meow-y voice. It became obvious that those two were going to go on for awhile, so I left them to each other and walked over watch the Siberian tiger plow through the snow.

My husband is magic. Because he talks to kitties, and because he managed to take a picture of me that I actually like.

*So called because when the world ends, there will be cockroaches, Cher, and Pokey. She has been put back together on three occasions: once when she pulled out her stitches early after being spayed, once when dogs dragged her off into the forest, and once more that I can’t remember the reason for. She’s also had many other expensive medical events. She’s incredibly rude and contrary and has a glare that prompted many of my friends to call her Demon Kitty.