This is Bella.*

When my sister asked me to send her a picture of Bella, just because, I thought, “Hey! Even better, I’ll send her a video of Bella being silly, or meowing after everything I say, because for some reason whenever I have my phone in hand and/or am chatting with someone on it, she feels deprived of attention and cries and meows and cries the whole time I’m on it. She also cries if I lock her out of the bathroom and will sit in front of the door and wait for me to open it, sticking her paws through the space between the door and the floor. She cries when she wants me to wake up in the morning, she cries when she wants me to go to bed at night , she cries when she wants to get under the covers with me (Yes, I know I’m a crazy cat lady with issues, okay? I’ve come to terms with it. So should you), she cries when her litter box isn’t clean, she cries when she wants any kind of attention, she cries when she wants to be left alone—she cries ALL THE DAMN TIME.

Cue annoyingly adorable video of her staring at me like I’m a moron, because I’m doing everything I can to get her to meow-cry, and it’s just. not. happening. (She does her little closed mouth whimper as she walks away at the end of the video, but you can barely hear it.)

*I named her Bella because when I adopted her, her name was Belize, and she just didn’t seem like a Belize. Unfortunately, little did I know two years later the name Bella would be synonymous with a sullen teenage girl in love with an equally sullen teenage vampire boy, otherwise known as the godawful book/movie that is the bane of my existence yet for so many young girls is their raison d’etre. Oh well.