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communal friends’ departures was not one of my favorites. Joining a new class, practicing saying “yes,” and watching old TV shows, now those assignments were reasonable.
    “Excellent corset, and we’ll see,” I said, pointing at her outfit and then kneeling down to look into the eyes of a small, tail-wagging hybrid of a dog.
    “Thanks, and just go with the one that grabs your heart the hardest. You’ll know him when you see him,” Veronica assured me.
    “It won’t be a dog, but we can look,” I said to Veronica. “Hi, little guy,” I cooed. The dog sat his little beige butt resolutely on the floor of his kennel. “Whatcha doin?” I asked. What a dumb question. He was doing the only thing he could do in his little kennel and that was to wait. Wait for someone to notice him, pick him out and take him home. I made the mistake of looking at his next-kennel-door neighbor. He was a big golden retriever who literally smiled at me between giddy barks. I tipped my head toward his kennel because either he had two wagging tails or he had a kennel mate.
    Kennel mate it was. He shared space with a medium-sized black dog that didn’t want to make eye contact with me. So I looked back at the grinning golden. When I did, I felt the eyes of his kennel mate on me. So I looked back, but he looked away again. His tail wagged faster when I looked at him, though. He must have been playing hard-to-get. Good tactic, I told him in my head. But a dog was not the right companion animal for me.
    I had thought a good deal about it all and knew my familiar would have to be an animal that matched my own Japanese-Irish temperament. Dogs were too outgoing and dependent. I needed a familiar who could do his own thing while I wrote, didn’t need to be let in and out, yet who would bring some life to my home. What kind of animal would that be? I ran my fingers over the amulet in my skirt’s pocket, wondering.
    I heard a raspy scrambling behind me and when I looked over my shoulder, I was greeted with the sight of not one but two scruffy-faced Jack Russell mixes. How did two dogs, from what I’m guessing was the same litter, wind up at the Humane Society? They were chasing each other in tight circles. Every now and then, they’d slow down enough for the tawny and white blur to become two separate dogs with well-defined spots. One kept his eyes on me even as he raced after his scrappy little buddy. He sent his metal water dish flying. I was shocked to hear the metallic clatter over all the yapping and howling in the clean, cement-walled corridor. The new puddle stopped the race as both dogs nosed around in the water, investigating. Aw Goddess, what was I doing here? How did people ever just choose one single dog to adopt? I turned back to the beige dog in front of me. He was still sitting, waiting for me to bring my attention back to him.
    “Okay, little guy, good luck here,” I told him, making up my mind. “Somebody is going to come and take you home soon.” As I stood up to walk down to the kennel that Veronica was peering into, the beige dog raised one paw and seemed to caress the air in front of him, as if he had been taught to shake by his previous owner. Had it not been for the wire between us, I would have shaken his paw. Sadness pooled in my throat and pressed from behind my eyes. I couldn’t take this.
    “We’re going to the cats now, right?” Veronica asked as we left the din of the dog section behind and found ourselves in the main foyer of the Humane Society again.
    “I don’t know…” I said. Cats had made me nervous for as long as I could remember. They were beautiful. I’d give them that. And they were very intelligent—which was part of the problem. I wasn’t keen on having a cat lurking around the house doing little cat things like sending a milk cap back and forth across the kitchen floor, planning a hostile takeover or batting at the curtain tassels. I knew proper witches had cats, but the lack of one was