In a painfully desperate story out of Minneapolis, MN, 24-year-old Juliet Ortiz has been patting the same spot on her bed for the past 15 minutes, trying to woo her cat Petra into sitting next to her.
“It’s honestly embarrassing,” she told reporters. “I thought we were friends, but friends don’t make you beg for them to hang out with you. She’s taking me for granted and it’s not cute.”
Juliet admitted that patting the bed has literally never done anything except get her cat to cast a disdainful look in her direction.
“I just keep thinking: this time it’s going to work,” she said. “I know she knows what I want, it’s just a matter of her deigning to give it to me. Granted, my cat is 12 years old and hasn’t done anything she doesn’t want to do, like, ever. But I still feel like if I keep this up, she’ll eventually give in.”
Juliet’s boyfriend Roland told reporters that not only will Petra not do what Juliet wants her to do, but she will also go out of her way to do the opposite.
“She’s kind of vindictive about it,” he said. “If Juliet is patting the couch for Petra to come sit next to her, Petra will walk toward the couch, stretch, then go jump up on the windowsill and gaze forlornly at the trees instead. It’s like she knows exactly what Juliet wants and actively rages against it, in some sort of protest against The Man. ‘The Man’ being Juliet, obviously. Petra has always loved cuddling with me.”
“It’s not like Petra doesn’t love her,” he continued. “She loves her the most. The way she treats her is the way you’d terrorize a younger sister or annoy your best friend. It’s all born out of love, but it is brutal to watch sometimes.”
More recently, Juliet said she tried to coax Petra out to play by jangling around her favorite toy, but Petra studiously ignored her, opting instead to play with a toy she’d literally never so much as looked at before.
“Yeah, it hurts,” Juliet admitted. “But I know one day she’ll come around. I just need to keep at it.”
At press time, Juliet had resorted to bringing Petra’s favorite tuna onto the bed and trying to lure her with it. However, Petra had decided that she actually no longer likes tuna, and would much rather dejectedly paw at her water bowl than eat any.
