When I first met Joxer the Mighty, we were in love with the same girl: A leggy redhead with a penchant for the same nerdy things I liked and a gift for choosing good people as her friends.
When he and the girl were introduced, Joxer was five weeks old and living in a cage at the Glendale Humane Society. His orange fur was unusually soft for a cat, and like his namesake from "Xena: Warrior Princess," he could talk a good game about smiting his enemies but at the end of the day he was just a big softie.
The girl and her kitten connected right there on the spot.
Five years later, I came along.
The first night I fell asleep at her apartment, I woke with Joxer on my feet — 10 pounds of pillowy warm fluff that made my ankles numb. I was adopted into the clan. We sealed it a few years later with a wedding but that night Marcy and Joxer and Bryan became a family.