This Cat Was Found Under A Frat House. Now She's Basically Running The Whole Household.

There's a species of cat that exists purely to have opinions about everything, loudly, at all hours, and Alba is a perfect example of it.

She's a tortoiseshell, three years old, and belongs to Madison Brown, the school photographer over at Virginia Tech's veterinary college. The vet school runs these little pet spotlight Q&As, and Alba's answers are genuinely one of the more entertaining ones, mostly because torti cats have a reputation for being chatty, and Alba is apparently living up to that reputation at full volume.

From frat house to actual home

Alba's origin story is a bit of a journey. Her dad's brother found her as a kitten under a frat house in Blacksburg, which, according to Alba, is exactly where she picked up her wild streak. Her dad adopted her, brought her home to live with his dog Neve in Roanoke, and then met Madison, at which point they all packed up and moved back to Blacksburg together. Alba's take on the upgrade is blunt: "Our current digs are much nicer than the frat house." Fair assessment.

A snugglebug who turns feral at bedtime

Ask Alba to describe herself, and she splits the difference mostly snugglebug, with a side of wild child. She's apparently a huge fan of laps, whether it's her dad's while he games or her mom's on the couch. But there's a switch that flips right around when everyone's trying to go to sleep, and suddenly she's yelling in the living room and sprinting up and down the hallway for no reason anyone can identify. Her explanation: she just likes keeping everyone on their toes.

Her signature move for getting attention is, unsurprisingly, yelling. Specifically at her dad, whenever she wants food, attention, or a ride around the house on his shoulders. And apparently, he actually talks back to her the two of them have full meow-based conversations that go back and forth until either Alba gives up or her mom's had enough of the noise.

The most dramatic household dynamics you'll read all week

Alba's got two dog siblings, Neve and Axel, and her relationship with each of them could not be more different. Neve's been around since Alba was a kitten, so she gets favorite status even though their main bonding activity is apparently Alba swatting at her just to start a chase around the house.

Axel gets a much rougher deal. Alba describes the relationship as "complicated," which is generous phrasing for what sounds like a fairly one-sided bullying campaign she swats him as he walks by, and she'll straight-up sit on the stairs specifically to block him from getting up to her parents' bed. Her own words on the matter: "I never said I was innocent!"

The talking cat thing is apparently the whole show.

If you ask what her party trick is, it's not a physical stunt it's the ongoing back-and-forth conversations she has with her dad, which everyone in the house apparently considers the most adorable thing about her. Fittingly, when asked what superpower she'd want, she didn't hesitate: talking to humans, since she "always has something to say even if they don't wanna hear it."

Even her occasional loud, weird-sounding yowls get treated as part of her charm rather than a problem her humans joke that it sounds like she's "trying to summon something otherworldly," and Alba's official explanation is that she's just updating the birds outside on the situation.

What she actually loves about her life now

Nothing dramatic, just the basics done well. All the love from her humans, and genuinely her words "the amount of cat towers they have around the house." A cat with priorities.