A few weeks ago, I gave my girlfriend the OK to let her cat move into my (well, I guess our) apartment. It was a struggle. I don't like cats. I'm allergic to cats. And among all cats, Toonces is especially challenging to admire.

I often berate Christa about her cat's name. "Toonces"? I ask. "Seriously? You are a writer. A good writer. How could you possibly name your cat Toonces?"

"I didn't want to!" she says. "It's my ex-boyfriend's fault! He's the reason I have the cat in the first place!"

"If you were going to name your cat after a third-rate SNL character, you should have named him Lothar of the Hill People. Or better yet Mr. Robinson."

"I wanted to name him Perro," she says. I have to admit this would have been a great cat name. Unfortunately we can't just start calling him Perro, because he, unlike most cats, actually understands and responds to his name. Even more unfortunately, I have to scream that name several times a day. It's humiliating - like screaming, "It's Pat!" over and over again. All day long.

My hatred of cats began at birth. Before I was even conceived, my family owned a cat called Nelson. Originally, my brilliant siblings had named it Nelly, a name which stuck for several years until one of the grown-ups flipped the cat over and discovered that Nelly had nuts. Nelson was the reason for all of my sisters' tears when every last one of their shoes suddenly reeked like cat piss, and my parents couldn't afford replacements. He was also to blame when my toddler face and torso became a mosaic of cuts and scratches. I hated that cat. There was nothing cute about him.

I distinctly remember when tumors took over his body and he had to be put to sleep. My mom took me aside and gently explained it to me. I was probably five or six. "Nelson is very sick and he's going to go away," she said. "He's not going to come back." I understood the situation a lot better than she thought I did, and I wasn't sad in the least.

"Good riddance." That was my general feeling. From then on, all of my cuts and scratches would come from things that mattered, like repeatedly attempting to ride my Big Wheel down the stairs, for instance.

Dozens of dogs crossed our door throughout the years. My siblings were always getting them, then moving into pet-free apartments and pawning them off on us. I loved it. Dogs were awesome. I couldn't get enough of them.

Then one frigid night in November of 1985, fueled by five or six bottles of Old Milwaukee and a couple of "bumps" of Phillips peppermint schnapps, my dad suggested that it might be really great to have a cat to lay on our laps and keep us warm on nights like these. With the memory of Nelson long distant, I enthusiastically supported the idea. Not even a month later, Chewie showed up on my 13th birthday. My dad came home from work and nearly had a seizure. "That's a huge commitment!" he shrieked.

"But it was your idea!" we all said. He had no recollection. Recalling this, I have to say that my father and I are practically the same person.

Chewie was the exact opposite of Toonces. While he is enormous, she was the runt of the litter. While he is needy, she shunned human contact. A tremendous mouser, she craved the outdoors, shredding screens and shins until she got her way. Every day, she'd leave the porch littered with tiny corpses. Every fall, she'd bring mice inside and let them go to escape into the walls and breed so that she'd have vermin to chase all winter. All in all, she was barely even a pet. She used the house as shelter, ignored the people in it, and completely kept to herself. Her face was covered in scars from fighting and killing other animals. Her ears were literally in tatters. You could dislike her and she was fine with that, because she didn't like anything that was alive.

Toonces, on the other hand, is huge and needy. He has literally never seen a rodent in his life. His hobbies include slamming his head into yours (his head is excessively large for a cat's and he is also excessively powerful, so, it's kind of painful), meowing incessantly because you are not awake, pulling the fur off his own arms (no medical reason - he just likes having bare arms), taking huge stinky dumps in your presence, drinking water from your glass by repeatedly dipping his paw into it and licking the water off, making sounds of protest that resemble someone squeezing a rubber duck, and petting your face whenever he wants attention, which is pretty much all the time.

So yeah, I guess I'm a cat owner now. And to tell you the truth, the big fatass is starting to grow on me. He's beginning to learn the rules of this place - and there are several non-negotiable rules.

And this fall, when the mice make their way inside looking for a place to spend the winter, he'll be able to earn his keep. I have no faith that he'll actually be able to catch a mouse, but maybe being chased by something the size and shape of a gorilla will send them scampering for a different house to invade.