The internet is a fast-paced machine, churning out as much new content as possible every single day. We can't keep up. There is too much to see. And within that chaos, the speed of everything, a lot of stories get lost. Stories that deserve to be remembered. Every day, people post stories about their cats. Cats that they have rescued, cats they adopted, cats that adopted them. We cherish them all, we do. Behind every adopted cat there is a story. I have one too. But some stories stick out more than others. Some stories remain in our memories longer. The same is true for the people of the internet. Which is why, within all the new stories that come out and go viral, every once in a while, an old story goes viral too. And we think that - especially now - when the world is full of so many fake stories, it's important to remember the old ones, the ones that we know are real.
Of course, the person who posted this story on X last week didn't bother mentioning that it was an old one. People liked it and shared it just because it was wholesome, thinking that it was a new story. But I, as someone who has been writing about cats for many years now, knew the original story. And so I went on the hunt, looking for the original coverage, for more pictures, for updates, and of course, I found it all.
This story originally came out around ten years ago, and there is a reason that it has stuck in people's memories, including mine. It's one of those "stories that give you hope for humanity" kind of situations. A kid was given permission to choose any pet that he wanted in the shelter, and he went ahead and chose the oldest, shyest, chonkiest orange cat who had been in the shelter for many years and had been passed over again and again. Honestly, we hope that our children are the same one day. We will certainly try to raise them that way.