By Alysha Pluta, Student Life Editor

I get back to my room and he runs to me, excited to see me. He missed me and he’s letting me know. Little meows and extensive purrs, letting me know he never wants me to leave again.

He knows I’ll always come back. I have to—I’m so bonded to this cat that I can’t even be away from him for a couple hours. I miss him, he misses me. My friends and I joke that the cat and I have separation anxiety from each other.

I always tell them, “I think he found me for a reason. I needed him, but I think he needed me too.”

He was around seven weeks when my family found him—almost six months later he’s my best friend.

We have an unexplainable bond, and I’ve never met a cat quite like him before.

He loves car rides. He’ll jump in his carrier and sit there contently until we get to the car. Then, he wants to be free, so we let him. At first, it was just to stop his screaming and see what he would do. Now, it’s because he loves it.

He’ll yell at you to let him out. Once he’s out and free to roam the car as he pleases, he’s happy. He loves the lights from the other cars, especially at night. You can see it when his eyes lock on something and widen.

His favorite part is when we go through tunnels. He gets entranced by the lights.

Once he’s done exploring, he’ll just sit in the back of the car, or on my lap, and watch the lights pass by.

During the end of a two-hour drive back to my hometown, we cuddled in the passenger seat and took a nap together.

He’s interesting because I think he can understand me more than I realize. Then one day, I went back to my dorm to find my retainer that I don’t wear as much as I should—meaning never—on my floor. Well, part of it.

I leave it out, hoping seeing it will convince me to wear it. It rarely works, but I do it anyways, forgetting that my cat is still a kitten.

It’s obvious in how he acts that he’s still a kitten, but I forget. That is, until I come back to my room and my toilet paper has little teeth marks in it, his scratching post is on the other side of the room, and half of my retainer is greeting me at the door.

After greeting him by petting him, I looked at him and asked, “Okay so, what did you do with the other half?”

The cat looked at me, meowed, and got up, like he knew what he needed to do. He stretched every inch of his body, stealthily jumped off my bed, pranced to the bathroom, and sat there, staring at me.

I looked around and there it was, right behind the bathroom door.

I can’t confidently say that he knowingly showed me where he put it, but it was a strange coincidence.

And when he plays, he plays hard. If we’re playing with a toy on a string, he will get to the point that he’s panting. His little pink tongue comes out and stays out, but he never stops playing.

His favorite toy is his mylar crinkle ball. He loves chasing it around the room, trying to hunt it.

Once, he even played fetch with it.

He jumped on my bed and brought it to me, dropping it in front of me. I could tell he still wanted to play, so I threw it, not thinking anything of it. Then he brought it back. So, I tried it another time, and he brought it back again.

We did this until he got bored and went to play with something else.

Whether its loving car rides or playing fetch, my cat never fails to surprise me.