Sally

Sally is my cat. She's a three-year old tortoise shell who hails from Brooklyn and she entertains me to no end. Everyday, I come home and before I'm even at the door, she can hear my keys and is meowing on the other side, ready to zip out into the hallway. This is her daily excursion.
Usually, I will go and find her when I hear a neighbor come out of their apartment. Some are amused that she likes to explore the halls so much. Usually I grab my laptop, make room for her on the loveseat and we go through our days.

For a while, she was one of the only friends I had in Milwaukee, so we'd spend a great deal of time together. I tried to teach her how to use her pink halter, but she just slunk around and looked forlorn. We might try that again this summer, since it's all about new projects this time around.
There are a lot of people out there who have either never had pets or simply can't comprehend talking to animals or making up voices for them to talk back with. My brother is one of them; we grew up in the same household with the same anthropomorphizing mother, but he grew up to be a zoologist who is leery of movies like "Finding Nemo" with talking fish (while in secret he lets his dog up on the furniture if his girlfriend isn't around).
Sally is also fluent in several languages:

She's also been to the Sorbonne, but dropped out after a very problematic and secretive row with a higher up in the French government. She burned her beret after that, and gave up cigarettes.
In Brooklyn she hung around the lofts and bemoaned the gentrification until one evening, she was found by my brother who, in a strange fit, decided to fly her back to Madison, WI with him and put her up in his apartment that he shared with his allergic roommate. She was passed around to several other people before my brother ended up moving in with his allergic girlfriend, and Sally was brought to live with me.
I was ecstatic; I kitty-proofed the windows with reinforced screens so she could sit and watch the birds without rolling out. I found extra toys for her, and brought in an air conditioner for the hot days.

Sure there are the days when I wake up to step in cat puke or a turd on the rug after a relatively restless night of her trying to chew on my hair and zipping around on the bed and I curse her and tell her I can't look at her at that exact moment due to overwhelming irritation.

But she's my dear friend; she's seen me through plenty of relationships during our tenure and will probably see me through plenty more and I will keep scrubbing the carpets to get the puke stains out and shaking the treat jar to get her excited.