I'm Emily Anthis, and I cover animal health and science for the science desk here at the Times.
Now, I like to think of myself as a dog person.
I grew up with dogs, But I ended up marrying a cat person.
And over the course of months and then years,
I began to understand the distinct rewards of cat ownership.
In June of 2023, my husband and I adopted two kittens, Olive and her sister Juniper.
They were four months old at the time,
and it was immediately clear that they were very different kittens.
Juniper, who we often called Juni, was loud and gregarious.
Olive, on the other hand, was always a little bit unusual.
She was shy and modest,
and we would find her hidden in the corner of our closet or tucked behind our shower curtain.
It honestly felt like a huge victory whenever we could get her to purr.
Despite that, Olive seemed perfectly healthy for about six months.
And then we started to wonder if maybe she seemed a little bit off.
So just to be safe, we picked her up and plopped her in her travel crate,
something that no cat likes to get into.
We walked the two blocks to the vet,
and we waited nervously in the exam room as the vet looked her over,
pulled back her lips to examine her gums,