Dorothy Munholland & Tela
I’m an only child and I grew up pretty attached to our family pets—Cloudy, a beautiful German Shepard, and Boris, the world’s coolest cat. After living in NYC for many years without an animal I was kind of desperate and talked my husband into fostering a puppy, hoping it would convince him to adopt a dog with me. It turns out that living with a dog in Minnesota is a very different experience (plus my parents did all the work) and I realized that having a young dog in a New York apartment isn’t the easiest thing in the world. After our foster puppy was adopted, I decided maybe I wasn’t ready for a dog of my own and turned my attention toward cats. My husband was “not a cat person” and said that the only way he’d ever agree to get a cat was if it magically appeared, but this was not “no” so I low-key started applying to all kinds of cat rescues in the city. The problem was that picking just one cat to bring home was too heartbreaking for me and I started to think maybe it wasn’t meant to be.
As fortune would have it, my cousin found a tiny brown and white kitten outside of her apartment in Bed-Stuy the same week that my husband was out of town, so I went right over to meet the kitten. She was in the bathroom, curled up on a cashmere scarf, but the second she had an opportunity to run free she was zooming around the living room. The glare she gave me with her big green eyes when I finally caught her sealed the deal and I brought her home.
By the time my husband returned from his trip, I had rearranged the entire apartment and it was clear the kitty was staying. Some of her fluffy fur had fallen out though and a vet confirmed she had fleas, a cold, and ringworm, which is highly contagious and can be transferred from animals to humans (I can confirm), so it was a tough scene when he got home... But she was so adorable and hilarious that he immediately fell in love, proving there’s no such thing as “not a cat person”.
It turns out not all cats are as chill as my childhood cat, who never jumped on counters, never scratched furniture, never knocked fragile things onto the ground, never pulled paintings off walls, generally slept when we slept and allowed me to dress him up. Tela is the opposite. She is high-energy and attention-seeking, but only on her own terms, and she absolutely loves anything designed specifically to deter cats. Anyone who has spoken with me by phone has probably heard me say “Tela no… Don’t do it… Tela!” and even hundreds of miles away she has people cracking up as they listen to me scramble on the other end of the line. Amidst the chaos, she always takes a moment to give me or my husband a slow blink… She is the most loving, expressive rascal. I think most people feel this way about their pets but truly everything Tela does is cute. She gets a lot of cookies for cat behavior, and we get an immeasurable amount of joy in return.
Dorothy is a Minnesotan living in Brooklyn with her husband, Oliver, and their cat, Tela. After working in product development in the beauty industry for nearly 10 years she started a non-alcoholic wine company called Studio Null with her college friend. She loves reading and traveling and spends a lot of time talking herself out of adopting another cat.