One sunny summer afternoon, my mother Fifi and I were on the patio sipping iced tea when the phone rang. It was Blanche, our local cat rescuer. Could she drop by for a glass of wine? She had something to show us.

Sure. (Eye roll.)

She arrived carrying a wire cage big enough for a couple of Saint Bernards. Inside it, swallowed by all that wire, were two tiny kittens she said she’d found on the side of the road. The mother cat was nowhere to be seen, so she scooped them up and brought them home.

We poured her a glass of wine and went out to the patio. She opened the cage and cradled the two kittens in her hands.

“This one,” she said, handing one to my mother, “is Fifi.”

“And this one,” she said, handing the other to me, “is Fiona. They’re sisters.”

I laughed so hard I could barely get the words out. “You named the kitten after my mother and then handed it to her? Are you kidding me?”

I looked at Mom with that look. “You know what that means.”

“No,” she said, “we are not taking in any more cats.”

We already had two rescues. Miss Fluff, a beautiful Norwegian Forest cat we’d adopted from this very rescuer, and Little Fella, a sweet yellow tabby who had wandered up to my parents’ house years before. The two had barely tolerated each other until we all moved into the condo. After a week locked in a closet together—their choice, not ours—they emerged best friends. We were not adding two more to the mix while ours were still adjusting to a strange new place. Or ever.

We put the kittens back into the cage and sent Blanche on her way. We laughed about it the rest of the evening. That, we thought, was that.

About a week later, Blanche called. A family emergency. She had to go out of town for a week.

Of course we took the kittens. As a foster. Not an adoption. We made sure she understood the difference.

One of the kittens was especially tiny. Mom hand-fed Fifi with a dropper. One afternoon, both kittens crawled into a nearly empty Kleenex box—nearly empty because they’d already shredded the tissues—and discovered they could not figure out how to get back out. Other than that, they were perfect houseguests. Too perfect. Way too adorable. Two of the sweetest bundles of joy I had ever met, and I knew exactly where this was going.

The week stretched into three. When she finally returned, she called and asked if we’d keep them just a little longer. Of course.

And then, a few days later, she dropped by unannounced. She handed me a single sheet of paper.

It was about euthanasia.

I told her to get out. “Leave. Now!” She did. Without the kittens.

My mother thought I had lost my mind. “This is certainly not how I raised you,” she said. “What on earth has gotten into you?”

I handed her the paper.

Mom was a Phi Beta Kappa, incredibly book smart. She was not, however, adept at reading people. She stared at the page. She did not understand why Blanche would bring us a sheet of paper about euthanasia.

I explained. We were being extorted. The flyer was a threat—an empty one, but a threat all the same. Take the kittens permanently, or see what might happen.

Mom’s reaction was immediate. “These cats are going nowhere. You call her and tell her she will never get these kittens back.”

“It’s a bluff,” I said. “She’d never do it.”

I told Mom we had two ways to make this call. “We can tell her she’ll never get those kittens back, or we can tell her the Girlie Girls have decided they would like this to be their forever home.”

Mom looked at me. She got it instantly.

I made the call. The kittens were ours.

Fiona made it to 16. Fifi has made it to 19+. Neither of them ever outgrew being kittens, and both were among the sweetest cats ever.

My mother passed away the year after we adopted them. And somehow, Fifi made it easier—because I still had her namesake to hold.

That is one of the greatest gifts I have ever received. It just didn’t arrive the way the giver intended.

Years later, I can give the rescuer some credit. Looking back, the flyer may have been less a threat than a face-saving exit—a way to hand us the kittens she’d already decided we should have, while preserving the fiction that she had tried to take them back. Maybe. I’ll never know.

What I do know is this: we wanted the kittens. The flyer had nothing to do with that. We could have called and said, “You’ll never get those kittens back,” and given her exactly the win she set up. Instead, we kept the kittens because we wanted them. On our terms. With a name we chose for the deal: the Girlie Girls.

None of this act moved me. The cage. The wine. The naming sleight of hand. The flyer. None of it. I clocked every move as it happened, and I made the call I would have made anyway, in the language I wanted on the record.

People will arrive at your door with cages and wine glasses and stories engineered to land. Some of them mean well. Some of them are working an angle. Most of them are doing both at once and couldn’t tell you which is which. It doesn’t matter. The question is never whether they’re sincere.

The question is whether you want what they brought.

The choice is yours. It always was.