Gianmarco Soresi

Here.

Hello.

Thank you very much.

So the way I tell this story really depends on one quick thing.

Could I get a round of applause if you're more of a cat person?

Okay.

All right, could I get a round of applause if you're more of a dog person?

If you're more of a bird person, sorry, no vote tonight, but great.

So I feel kind of safe to say I hate cats.

I hate them.

And it's not their fault.

It's not their fault per se.

It's just that my first memory, and I've done a lot of therapy, but my first memory in this world is when I was three years old and my mom and I were moving into her new boyfriend's house and he had a cat named Smokey.

And I went to pet Smokey, and as cats are apt to do when you show affection, Smokey scratched my face.

Eyes, nose, mouth, there's blood.

It was so bad.

So that's the backstory.

My first memory in this world is my soon-to-be stepfather's cat wounding me, which obviously carried a lot of metaphorical weight as well.

And I thought that my girlfriend knew this.

I thought we were on the same page about this, that I wasn't really into having cats until one day we were coming home from our weekly pay-what-you-can yoga class.