“Fair enough.” Lambert collects the forms from John, taking a moment to mark the adoption forms with a pen to highlight the information he needs filled in, and where signatures are necessary. The adoption forms look formal enough, but the adoption agreement absolutely looks like someone’s mother went nuts on the clipart, with squiggly borders around the edge of the paper and bold emphasis on how important! Adopting a cat is!!! And how this act of kindness is a very serious commitment because they're now responsible for another life!!!. It’s also on orange paper, for whatever that counts.

There’s wording about promising never to declaw the cat, to provide a safe and humane environment and a high quality of life, a clause that say the adopter should return the cat if they find themselves unable to take care of it, and probably some totally unnecessary verbiage that essentially amounts to the same. Lambert takes the whole thing over to the table and puts it down for the being to look over, and heads over back to the bulletin board where the cat pictures are stuck up. After taking a moment, he pulls down five of the pictures, then spreads them on the table as well for them to peruse. Helpfully, the information is written underneath, in a neat blocky script.

So now they have a choice to make between:

Lord Oedipuss, a large, middle-aged cat with a cinnamon coat and a squashed-in face.
Cookie, a small, old white cat with a long-furred coat and a lazy eye that even the flattering angle can’t hide.
Reaper, a brown tabby whose picture is slightly blurry like he’d been moving too much to get a picture of.
Bubbles, a muscular tom with short blue tabby coat that looks ready to fight everyone.
Catastrophe, a pitch-black cat with bright green eyes, and a spot of white above her lip that looks like she’s perpetually stained with milk.

C H O O S E Y O U R F I G H T E R