Meet Luke and Leia

Today I woke up, got dressed, and immediately drove down to Sherwood. I came home with two cats. Luke and Leia, brother and sister, both six years old, both brown tabbies, both bonded. I’d been thinking about adopting for a while, and the moment I met them at the shelter it was a done deal — they were coming home together.

How they got here

Earlier this year my partner and I separated. She had two cats I loved, and I missed them in a way I wasn’t expecting. The house was already set up for cats — perches in the windows, the cupboards already cat-proofed (or so I thought), a whole infrastructure I’d built for animals that weren’t mine anymore.

One morning I woke up and couldn’t stand the quiet. I drove to Sherwood that afternoon.

Best decision I’ve made. I named them after Star Wars because I love Star Wars, and because two small brown shadows showing up exactly when I needed them felt like the right kind of story. My Mew Hope.

Where they came from

I adopted them from the Cat Adoption Team in Sherwood, Oregon — the Pacific Northwest’s largest nonprofit cat shelter. Highly recommend them.

The first few days

They hid. Which is what cats do in a new house — under the bed, behind furniture, the usual. No drama, no yowling, just two small brown shadows working out the new floor plan on their own schedule.

Then I opened the rest of the house up to give them more space, and I lost them. Fully lost them. I thought I knew every inch of this place until I met these two. I checked every closet, every corner, every gap behind every piece of furniture, and they were just — gone.

Eventually I found them. Luke had managed to open a kitchen cupboard, climb inside, and pull the door shut behind himself.

After that, I AirTagged them both.

Luke

Luke is a Domestic Longhair, and I’m pretty sure he’s part Maine Coon. He’s enormous and he’s fluffy.

He’s also a complete goofball. And every night he hops up onto the bed and curls into the crook of my arm and stays there until morning — which I did not expect from a six-year-old shelter cat.

His other defining trait: he loves bass-heavy music. I’ll have something on in the bedroom while I’m getting ready in the morning, and he is locked in. The bigger the low end, the better.

Leia

Leia is a Domestic Shorthair, smaller and sleeker than her brother, and she is the sweetest girl on the planet.

She’s also my favorite coding copilot — she’ll come up onto the desk and settle in for however long the session runs.

Leia, reviewing my code.

She does have separation anxiety. We’re working on it.

And underneath all the sweetness she’s a total killer. There are squirrels that show up out the back window, and Leia goes into full predator mode — tail twitching, chittering, the works. If those squirrels ever made it inside, they would not survive the encounter.

They’ve already rearranged my whole routine. I’m not mad about it.