It was Angel’s temper that broke first, shoving us both into an icy mountain stream. Mind you, she’d had to trick us into going ten miles out of our way so that there was ice water to be shoved into, but her anger had been building up for weeks.

Central to the epic rant she delivered while we shivered around a fire was the fact that Ariel was obviously going into heat for the first time in her life, and it was obviously my fault because I’d named her.

Guilty as charged, sure, and after the cold shower it was obvious to me, too, but identifying the problem didn’t solve it. Ariel was a cat, and she couldn’t stop being a cat.

But we could stop being together, the three of us. The thought chilled me in a way the fire couldn’t touch.