The human target’s name was Barrett Ellis. Eona had been following him since he arrived in Seattle the night before, though putting it that way made it sound like she’d done a lot more than she actually had. From the moment he landed at SEA-TAC, he’d gone straight to his hotel and then… stayed put. He hadn’t left the room in twenty-four hours. 

“How can I do my job if all you do is wallow in self-pity, you lump?” Eona snapped, motioning at the obviously depressed man sitting in his boxers on the unmade hotel bed, pizza box open beside him, laptop on his lap as he ate and watched some B movie over the surprisingly decent hotel WiFi.

It was becoming increasingly obvious that she only had two options: make Casimir and Barrett cross paths when Barrett left for the wedding, or somehow get Casimir into the hotel past the staff and into his room.

Both plans sounded annoying, but her current thought was to go for the lesser of two evils: plan A. It was easier to guide both parties towards each other than to herd a cat towards a place that was not cat friendly. 

It was different when it was a private home. Actually, getting a cat into a private home was easy - she’d done it so many times before. Eona’s proudest accomplishment was when she got Artemis, a pregnant mama kitty, into the home of a single young man, and she gave birth to her kittens under his bed. The human’s response had been so sweet that she’d needed to sit down and have a good cry. Some humans were so good it was almost overwhelming.

But this wasn’t a private home. She’d tried getting a cat to a hotel room before - it did not work. Mostly? It had been pure chaos. Something straight out of a comedy movie.

Suddenly, while Eona was busy trying to formulate her plan, Barrett finally set his pizza and laptop to the side, and went to stand up. This wasn’t anything unusual, after all humans did need to relieve themselves fairly regularly, but this looked different. Instead of going to the toilet, the 30-something man grabbed a pair of jeans from his suitcase and pulled them on over his boxers.

“Wait, wait, wait, where are you going? Why? It’s not time for the wedding yet-” she paused for a moment, frowning as he pulled a hoodie over his wifebeater top. “Outside? You’re going out? Oh, why don’t you talk to yourself! I prefer humans who think out loud.” She huffed softly, her fluffy orange tail swishing angrily from side to side in frustration.

All she could do was follow Barrett, figure out where he was going, and then maybe send Casimir to get in his way. Perhaps this would be easier than she thought?

To her surprise, as she followed him out of the hotel and down the street, he went in the perfect direction: towards Casimir. Probably towards the mini mart that Cas always hung around for scraps that the young clerk often tossed out for him after hours.

“Oh please, oh please go to the mini mart. Go to the mini mart.” She brought her hand up, and blew him a kiss. As she did so, the kiss formed a translucent pink bubble, then floated lazily to the human, hitting him square in the back of the head. Without the enchanted arrows, every WWD employed Cupid came up with their own unique way to influence people’s emotions. Eona was a fan of blowing kisses.

When the bubble popped on the back of Barrett’s head, he paused just a moment, long enough to run a finger through his messy dishwater blond hair in confusion. “I was already doing that…?” he mumbled to himself, as though confused by his own intrusive thoughts, before shaking his head and continuing to walk.

“Well, I would have known that if you had just said that,” Eona huffed, crossing her arms as she once again started walking after the man, her tail continuing to swish, and her ears pinned back in annoyance. Some humans got under her skin, and this was one of them.

If he and Casimir weren’t literally soulmates, she would give up on his sour, mopey butt.

Speaking of Casimir, she could sense him nearby. They were almost to the mini mart, and like clockwork, the tomcat had found his way back to his favorite haunt. It was going to be a piece of cake, she just needed to make sure things went off without a hitch.

When the mini mart came into view, Eona trotted ahead of Barrett to locate Casimir. It didn’t take her long - he was curled up around the side, next to the large, smelly dumpster. He looked a little worse than the last time she’d seen him, and she couldn’t help but frown. Nothing broke her heart more than a cat who deserved all the love in the world, but received none of it.

“Okay, buddy. I’m going to need you to do something. I know you’re tired, but if you do this, you may never have to worry about where you’ll get your next meal ever again.” 

Once again, she blew a kiss bubble, this time towards the cat. It popped on contact, and she knew that everything she wanted him to do popped up into his head, as though he’d thought it himself. That was how a Cupid’s powers worked, after all - almost like intrusive thoughts, but for your benefit.

With a lazy yawn and a full body stretch, rolling his tired muscles, the cat started pulling himself towards the front of the mart. Eona had given him the perfect setup: walk towards the entrance, just in time to walk up to Barrett, and rub on his legs with a meow.

Cas had one of the sweetest meows she’d ever heard; so sweet it could cut through the hardest of hearts. So she was betting on that catching Barrett’s attention, if nothing else.

It went exactly the way she’d imagined. Barrett’s long strides stopped as the tabby tomcat approached him, and the soft little prrr-meeps completely left him frozen. He looked lost, confused, and like he was debating whether to just walk past or pick this scraggly looking thing up and hug it. 

“Uhhh… hey, uh, hey buddy. What are you doing?” Barrett asked, pushing his hair away from his face, ignoring it when it fell right back into his eyes. He scanned the area, looking for something, anything that might get him out of this situation. “I’m not really a fan of cats, so… can you just find someone else to bother?”

“Meew!” Was the only audible response to his question.

Inaudible to both Frontstagers, Eona, with her clipboard clutched in front of her as she recorded what she was witnessing, spoke to them both, “Oh don’t listen to the grumpy man, Casimir. We double and triple check to make sure all of our humans will love and appreciate their cats. There is not a single human in our system who dislikes cats, only those who have never owned one, or have only previously had bad experiences with cats that were entirely wrong for them. Our system is perfect - we only match cats and humans who will work out.” She pointed her pen at Barrett, and then at Casimir. “And you two… you are soulmates.”

The human and cat were at a temporary stand-still. Casimir continued to mew and beg for love, and Barrett looked like he wanted to run, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. 

Finally, after a frustratingly long time, Barrett sighed and raised his hands in defeat. “Okay, just give me a minute, okay? I’ll be right back.” He stepped quickly around Casimir, and before the cat could get in the way again, slipped into the mini mart and out of sight.

Eona thought about following him, but from his tone, she was pretty sure he had given in to the demands of the skinny stray cat. She wrote down her observations as she waited for him to reemerge from the store, humming softly as she did so. It was all going to plan. 

This was the best reaction she had seen someone have to Cas, yet. 

Most people, even the craziest of cat ladies, had been reluctant, because they thought he had a bad personality. But she knew better than anyone that wasn’t the case. 

In fact, that seemed to be the case for both Casimir and Barrett. Eona didn’t fully understand the grading system, but she knew this much: lower numbers meant harder placements, and matching numbers meant perfection in all the ways that mattered.

Personality. The lives they’d lived. Family. Trauma.

Casimir had been a Christmas gift to a young girl from her grandmother when he was just a small kitten. His owner had loved him for two years, but then she lost interest in cats and her parents had inconspicuously removed him from the home, having never wanted pets in the first place. He had loved his girl and her parents dearly, and couldn’t understand why they abandoned him. 

Meanwhile, Barrett had married his high school sweetheart, and he thought they would be together forever. But after ten years together with no sign of children, suddenly his wife turned up pregnant, and admitted she’d been cheating on him with his best friend for years. They ran away together without a shred of remorse, leaving Barrett to pick up the broken pieces of his life.

Their stories were heartbreaking, and left them both with abandonment issues and an empty place in their heart that Eona was there to fill.

Eona was pulled away from her writing when she heard the mini mart bell ding, and looked up in time to see Barrett walk out with a plastic bag, full to the brim with all sorts of things. Instead of coming all the way back out to the parking lot, he walked to the edge of the sidewalk and sat down, beckoning to the scruffy tabby.

It didn’t take any additional convincing, and Casimir approached him curiously, sniffing at the bag in his hand. Chuckling, Barrett finally scratched the cat behind the ears, earning him a deep, rumbling purr in response. “You know, for such a mean looking guy you sound like a squeak toy. What flavors do you like? Fish or bird? I’m more of a fish guy, myself, and we are in Seattle. One of the top fish places in the whole mainland US.”

“Mee!” responded the cat, reaching up to pull the bag down enough for him to peer inside, earning him another laugh from the human who was looking less and less haunted by his ex-wife’s wedding by the minute.

“Fish it is, but let me get it for you, bud, you don’t have thumbs,” he said as he pulled a can out, popping the top, before setting it on the ground, and gently turning the cat to face it. “Mini mart cat food isn’t the best out there, I’m sure, but… you look like you’re not too picky right now.”

As Casimir eagerly plowed into the can of salmon pate, Eona watched the exchange just as eagerly. While the cat ate, Barrett pulled out a can of beer for himself and stared at it for a moment, before shaking his head and putting it back in the bag, instead opting to pet the cat. “Yes! Yes! Cat! Oh please, he needs you and you need him.” Eona begged, knowing that neither of them could hear her unless she used her power. But she wasn’t going to force it. She refused to force it any farther than putting them in the vicinity of each other, with the idea to interact.

It was an excruciatingly long time to wait for the decision to be made. The moment the connection was official and her work was done, the clipboard would automatically disappear from her hands, sent straight to the higher ups at WWD for archival purposes. It wasn’t happening yet, which meant the Official Decision hadn’t been made yet. 

That’s what they called the moment that the human accepted the Cat Distribution System’s feline offering. Because some refused, for one reason or another, and unless they accepted, the cat would be a part of the WWD’s system until someone did accept them.

“You know I can’t take you home, bud, I don’t even live here,” Barrett was telling the cat, continuing to pet him, letting him continue to eat his fill. “Though, you know… no.” He shook his head, then looked back down at the cat again. “... you’re lonely, too, aren’t you?”

Silence stretched, except for the (admittedly rather gross) sounds of a cat eating pate, and a very distinctly happy deep, rumbling purr coming from Casimir. He hadn’t been shown love like this in six years - even the clerk who fed him never petted him, only tossed scraps before going back inside. The cat was a lover, not a fighter, despite his appearance.

Suddenly, with a flourish and a puff of what could only be called magical glitter, the clipboard vanished from Eona’s hands. A scream, both from surprise and delight, burst out of her before she could control herself, and she clapped her hands over her mouth to try to keep from crying. 

“I don’t really want to go to a wedding, anyway. Maybe I’ll see if the hotel allows pets. Not that I’m keeping you or anything, don’t get any funny ideas. I just thought maybe I could give you some more food. This isn’t the best place to feed you. Once you finish with that, we’ll go, okay?” Barrett said, petting the cat a few more times, before shaking his head. “But I don’t need a pet. It’ll be a lot of work to get one back home. So this is temporary.”

Except, Eona knew for a fact, that it was not temporary at all.