I didn't want a cat.
That's important. I need you to understand that right from the start. I wasn't some lonely person looking to fill a void. I wasn't scrolling adoption sites at 2am. I wasn't the kind of guy who talked to strays or kept treats in his glove compartment just in case.
I was just a person who lived alone, worked from home, and had a perfectly functional life that did not include a furry alarm clock waking me up at 5:47 every morning.
But then this one showed up.
She was sitting on my fire escape. Third floor, Brooklyn, November. Just staring through the glass door like she'd paid rent and expected to be let in. Tiny thing. Black and white, with this one perfect circle of black around her left eye, like she'd been in a fight and lost spectacularly.
I shooed her away. She came back.
I ignored her. She pressed her face against the glass and made these little squeaking noises, not even real meows, just these pathetic sounds like a rusty hinge.
I gave her some tuna. On the fire escape. In a bowl I kept meaning to bring inside.
Three weeks later, I was buying a litter box and six varieties of wet food, trying to figure out how to tell my landlord that I'd become a person with a cat.
I named her Olive. Because of the eye.
December was rough. My freelance copywriting work had dried up—clients tightening budgets, end-of-year freezes, the usual. I wasn't behind on rent yet, but I could see it from where I was standing. Olive didn't care. Olive sat on my keyboard while I tried to pitch myself to potential clients, her warm little body blocking the delete key like she was trying to protect me from my own emails.
One night I was spiraling. You know the feeling. You've sent out forty applications and heard back from three and all three were "we've decided to move forward with other candidates." You've done the math on your savings account and the math is not optimistic. You're sitting on your couch at 11pm and the cat is asleep on your chest and you're both just waiting for something to change.
I picked up my phone.
I don't know why. I'd never gambled online before. Never had any interest. But I'd seen an ad somewhere—maybe Instagram, maybe a pop-up on some site—and I'd filed it away in the back of my brain under "things people do when they're desperate."
The
Vavada registration took like two minutes. Email, password, confirm you're not a robot. I was a robot that night. I was just going through motions.
I deposited twenty bucks.
Lost it.
Deposited another twenty.
Lost that too.
Olive woke up, judged me silently, and resettled on my chest. I put my phone down and stared at the ceiling. Twenty bucks wasn't going to fix my life. Forty bucks wasn't going to fix my life. What was I even doing?
I didn't touch the app for a week.
Then, on a Friday afternoon, I got a rejection email from a client I really wanted. The kind that pays well, the kind that leads to referrals, the kind I'd built my whole pitch around. I read it three times, closed my laptop, and looked at Olive.
She blinked at me.
"I know," I said. "I know."
I opened the app. My balance was still zero, but there was a notification about some welcome offer I hadn't used. Free spins on some slot. I clicked it without reading the details.
The slot was this ridiculous Viking theme. Bearded guys with axes, longboats, that whole thing. I wasn't paying attention. I was just clicking the spin button, watching the reels turn, not even looking at what landed.
Then the screen started shaking.
Confetti? Was that confetti? Some kind of animation was happening and I didn't understand it and then the balance in the corner of my screen went from zero to four hundred dollars.
I actually said "what" out loud. Olive's ears perked up.
I stared at the number. The number stared back. I withdrew it immediately—like, within seconds—because I was absolutely certain that if I waited even one more spin, the universe would realize its mistake and take it back.
Four hundred dollars.
That's not life-changing money. That's "my car needs new tires" money. That's "I can pay my electric bill and buy groceries" money. That's not a story you tell at parties.
But here's the thing about four hundred dollars when you've been staring at your savings account balance every morning, doing the math, trying to figure out how many more weeks you can stretch.
It's everything.
I paid my electric bill. I bought groceries—real groceries, not just pasta and jarred sauce. I took Olive to the vet for her first checkup, which I'd been putting off because I was terrified of what it would cost.
The vet said she was healthy. About a year old, maybe younger. No microchip. No one was looking for her.
"She picked you," the vet said, scritching Olive behind the ears. "That's how it works. You don't choose the cat. The cat chooses you."
Olive looked at me. That one black circle around her eye. She looked at me like she'd been trying to tell me this all along.
I didn't play again for two weeks. Then, on another rough night—another rejection, another email that started with "unfortunately"—I found myself going through that
Vavada registration process again. Different email. Different password. I don't know why I didn't just log back into my old account. I think I wanted a clean slate.
Deposited twenty. Lost it.
Deposited twenty. Won sixty. Cashed out forty.
Deposited twenty the next night. Won a hundred and twenty. Cashed out a hundred.
It became this weird ritual. Not chasing losses—I never chased losses. Just... checking in. Seeing what happened. Sometimes I lost. Sometimes I won a little. I never won big again, not like that first time. But I won enough.
Enough to cover Olive's next vet visit. Enough to buy the good food, the grain-free stuff she actually liked. Enough to get her one of those fancy cat trees she ignored completely in favor of sitting on my laptop.
By February, I'd pieced together enough freelance work to get stable again. Not comfortable. Not secure. But stable. The kind of stable where you don't check your bank account every morning with your heart in your throat.
I kept playing. Once a week, maybe. Twenty bucks. Thirty minutes. It wasn't about the money anymore. It was about the ritual. The reminder that sometimes, when you least expect it, the universe just throws you a bone.
Olive turned one—or at least, I decided she turned one. I bought her a little hat from the pet store and tried to take a photo. She knocked the hat off and sat on my keyboard instead.
I took the photo anyway. It's my phone wallpaper now.
I don't tell this story often. It sounds stupid when I say it out loud. "I won money at
Vavada registration and adopted a cat." Like some kind of lottery winner sob story. Like a bad commercial.
But here's the thing.
That four hundred dollars didn't change my life. What changed my life was Olive sitting on my chest that night, warm and small and utterly unconcerned with my bank account balance. What changed my life was realizing that something could need me, and I could show up for it.
The money just made it possible.
She's asleep on my lap right now. It's 10am on a Tuesday, I'm between deadlines, and she's curled into a tight little ball with her nose tucked under her tail. That black circle around her eye is facing me. Even in sleep, she's watching.
I think about deleting the app sometimes. Haven't used it in months. But I keep it on my home screen, right next to the photos, right next to the vet's number. A reminder that sometimes the thing you think you're chasing isn't the thing you actually need.
I thought I was chasing money.
I was chasing a reason to open the door.
And she was sitting on the fire escape, waiting for me to figure that out.
