Summer is the perfect time to adopt a cat

I love summer, yet it raises a red flag for those of us who also love cats. “Kitten season is in full swing,” proclaims the Animal Rescue League (ARL) of Boston, referring to the warm months during which cats breed, breed and breed some more. ARL estimates that 700,000 cats live on the streets throughout Massachusetts. Nationally, the number might exceed 100 times that.

Shelters, scrambling for temporary foster homes to avoid overcrowding and the resulting health issues, face misapprehensions about cats that scare off potential fosters. A dog-loving friend once voiced the widespread belief that cats don’t interact with humans. According to this view, they’re furry goldfish: cute to look at, but too aloof to be fun. This may explain why cats place second behind dogs in popularity as pets.

Silver-medal status belies the fact that some shelters report 90% of families that foster kittens end up adopting their purring guests permanently. Joyless fish facsimiles don’t rack up that many happily-ever-afters. Permit me to dispel the no-fun concern, and others, regarding humans’ real best friend.

Shelters, scrambling for temporary foster homes to avoid overcrowding and the resulting health issues, face misapprehensions about cats that scare off potential fosters.

I’ve nothing against Rover; as a young bachelor, I volunteered as a dog walker at my local shelter. But as an animal-loving bachelor with an office job, canines craving constant socialization were off the table in my efficiency unit. Fend-for-themselves felines seemed precision-engineered for such as I. Bonus point: They didn’t require walks and bathroom breaks in summer’s blazing oven or winter’s Arctic freezer.

Still, I adopted a kitten with some trepidation that peeling him from his mother and litter-mates would unnerve him. Yet minutes after getting home, he was bouncing playfully after a foam ball. His soothing glance — eyes wide with innocence until they narrowed in loving contentment as I pet him — reassured me that he’d adapt just fine. He came to love fetching that ball. Not in the fashion of a dog, of course; declining to drop it at my feet, he’d deposit it midway across the living room and bat it toward me as best he could, for me to fetch and toss again. (This struck me as unusually accommodating for a cat.)

But the bonding experience I treasure most involved Snowball, the brother in a sibling cat pair that my ex-wife, son and I adopted. In 2016, a concussion after an accident forced me to take daily naps for weeks to rest my fog-bound brain. Most days, Snowball leapt into bed to sleep with me, cuddling my head like a purring security blanket, as if he grasped that that was the part of my anatomy in need of healing.

Sitting on my lap, his sister Blackie might gently paw my nose if I stopped petting her, an unmistakable communication between species: You’re not done yet. After both Snowball and Blackie died, my family got another brother-sister pair. Ash chases elastic hair bands shot across the living room and, when bored with that, amuses himself by batting a band around the dining room table leg. Luna is the lap cat in the family; stretch out on the sofa or leave the bedroom door open at night, and you’re apt to wake with her sprawled on top of you. She has plopped on my lap as I type this.

Dog lovers perhaps measure “fun” by animals’ willingness to sit, stay and obey other human commands. Cats flunk that anthro-centric demand, hands down, and bless them: Their unquenchable trace of in-the-wild independence is what intrigues us fans. It also makes caring for them a snap. And many shelters cover expenses for food, vet costs and supplies when you foster kittens or cats.

Even bringing cats into a home with a dog needn’t put you off. We adopted Natalie, our retriever mix, five years after Snowball and Blackie. Thanks to a few suggestions found online and from the vet, we taught our trio, if not interspecies love, then reciprocal tolerance. By the time Ash and Luna moved in, the kittens might as well have been a pair of comfy old shoes as far as Natalie was concerned. For their part, the cats nuzzle and lick her, sharing affection as they do with their human roommates.

Cats have added joy to my life that was never more evident than at the end of theirs. Years after Snowball comforted me post-accident, we had to euthanize him. He cuddled with me again, this time on the vet’s couch, as I said goodbye. Aloof? Please.

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