It was about twelve years ago. My ex-boyfriend and I decided we wanted a cat, so we went to the SPCA with no idea what we’d find.

What we walked into was sensory overload. Dogs barking everywhere. People running around. A whole room of cats stacked in cages — some playing, some scared, some asleep.

I still remember seeing Frosty for the first time. She was a tiny kitten, just sitting calmly, watching all of it. Taking it in. I’ll never forget what my ex said when he was looking at her — he said he saw adventure in her eyes. That’s stayed with me, and it turned out to be exactly right. Everything is an adventure to Frosty. Life is a big adventure to Frosty. She is passionate. She is loving. And she has been through a lot.

What we didn’t know at first was that another family was already looking at her. The moment we figured that out, we literally ran up to the counter and said, “We want her, we want her, we want her” — fast enough to get there first.

A funny detail: Frosty was free. The SPCA was running a promotion that day, and the first five kittens adopted were free of charge. One of the best things that has ever come into my life came at no cost at all, with an unlimited supply of unconditional love in return.

But Frosty had had it rough before she was mine.

Wilmington, in winter

She came from Wilmington, Delaware. It was winter. She was a tiny kitten — the size of a hand — wandering the neighborhood alone. I don’t know how she lost her mother. I don’t know about her brothers and sisters, if there were any. I wonder about that often. I wonder what her mother would have been like.

She had nothing to eat. It was freezing. She had no business surviving.

There was an elderly woman on that street who watched what happened. For a couple of days in a row — cold, brutal days — she’d seen Frosty climb onto a neighbor’s back porch, slip under the deck, and press herself against the back door, trying to get just a little warmth.

And then she watched her neighbor come out with a broom and beat that tiny kitten off the porch.

I don’t know what kind of person does something like that. I don’t want to.

But that’s what happened, and the woman who saw it couldn’t take it anymore — she scooped Frosty up and brought her to the SPCA. The same day we walked in.

Frosty’s odds at that moment were long. She was a couple of months old, headed into a system where cats are never in short supply, and where the homes that take them in aren’t always the kind of homes a cat deserves. People adopt cats because they’re cute. That isn’t the same thing as being willing to sacrifice for them, to give them a real life, to treat them as if they matter — because a lot of people don’t think animals matter at all. They think only humans do.

I’m not one of those people.

I think Frosty and I were extremely lucky to find each other that day. She needed me. As it turned out, I needed her, too.

The little room

I remember being in the little SPCA visiting room when they brought her in and set her down on the floor. Tiny. Uncoordinated. I remember her walking pensively across the room and finally jumping up on my lap and rubbing her head against my wrist.

Jackson sitting on a wooden bench in a quiet, sunlit room, looking down at Frosty curled on his lap

Neither of us knew at that moment how many hundreds — thousands — of hours we’d spend together over the next twelve years and counting. I had no idea what she would come to mean to me. She had no idea what she would come to mean to me, either.

Twelve years

The past twelve years have not been easy. We’ve gotten through them together, and I would not have made it through without her.

Through some of my hardest times, Frosty and my other cat — Kittles, whom I recently lost — were there for me when no one else was. When I wasn’t putting enough out into the world for anyone to be there for me, they were there. Frosty was there.

She had a short, rough life before I brought her home. Since then she has been treated like the princess she is. Every possible luxury a cat could want — including many, many binges on Fancy Feast. She’s a big fan.

Frosty stretched out on a sunny windowsill in South Beach, palm trees and Art Deco pastel buildings visible through the window, the ocean in the distance

In her twelve years, Frosty has lived in nine different apartments across eight different cities. She has made her way from Wilmington all the way down to Miami Beach, where she spent a few years on South Beach. She’s a Florida girl now. But Delaware is still her birthplace, and I think about that sometimes when I look at her sleeping in the sun.

A part of us died when Kittles passed away a few months ago. We’ve been there for each other through that, too.

What I mean when I say I love her

Jackson and Frosty sleeping nose to nose on a pillow, warm low light, Frosty’s eyes half-open and content

I love Frosty. Not in the way people throw the word “love” around now — not the way people say they love a coffee shop or a sweater. I deeply love Frosty.

Every single day I have with her is a blessing, and I don’t take a single one of them for granted, because I have been reminded recently that those days are not unlimited.

She is a little shy with strangers. After what she’s been through, she can have a bite reflex — she doesn’t mean to, and as soon as it happens she feels terrible about it and comes back over to make it right. None of that has ever bothered me about her.

Every night when I go to sleep, I go to sleep nose to nose with her.

Of the ten strongest and most meaningful connections I will ever have in this life, she is unquestionably on the list, and nothing is ever going to take her off it.

Why she is the mascot

It is fitting that she is the official mascot of The Tennis Tactician.

We have done everything together. I am nothing without her. She has earned it.

She is a survivor.

A lot of people don’t know whether my company will survive. A lot of people doubt me, and they have every right to. But I cannot think of a better or more deserving mascot for this business than my cat Frosty.

That’s why you’ll be seeing a lot of her on this site. Because I love her, and I want the world to know how special and amazing she is.