Girl on a pillow

I don’t even know what prompted me to walk into the “cat room” at the LA Pound that Friday afternoon. With two dogs at home and only three days of marriage under our belts, Jason and I really had no business adopting yet another creature. And yet, there we were, prying open a stainless steel cage to see what the crazy ball of fur was whirling around on the second shelf. She was little and shaggy with a bushy grey tail and a long racoon-like nose. They weren't keeping her with the other dogs at the pound because she was too small and, as I would later learn, prone to escape.

After rubbing her body all over my face to be sure she was hypoallergenic, I implored the woman manning the front desk to let us bypass the weekly silent auction and take Gina home that day. Eventually, she acquiesced.

On our way home, Jason and I found ourselves famished from the selfless, noble act of bribing a volunteer worker into giving us the most desirable dog in the pound five days before she was allowed to leave. We debated what to name our new baby fraggle as we pulled into Sushi Hiko on Sawtelle for a quick bite to eat. We opened all the windows and parked in a spot where we could monitor the surroundings. I remember being so happy as I shoveled heaps of tuna sashimi drenched in ponzu sauce into my face. We cancelled our trip to Hawaii and called all our friends to share the news. We left the restaurant approximately forty-five minutes later.

It wasn’t until we were physically standing in our former parking spot that we realized our car, along with Gina, had been towed!