Nyong’o had fallen in love with the cat she worked with for A Quiet Place: Day One. She mentioned this to her friend, who made appointments at shelters and adoption centers the next day. At first Nyong’o wasn’t sold on the idea, but when she arrived at Best Friends Animal Society, she saw a sign. Literally. “There was a poster that said something like, ‘Not over your ex? Foster a cat,’” she says. “It was spot-on.”
The shelter paired her with Yoyo, and after two days of fostering, she knew: “This cat isn’t going anywhere,” she says. “I guess the best anecdote for when you feel poorly taken care of is to take care of something. And I took care of Yoyo and he pried my heart open.”
We’re nearing the end of our car ride, so I ask if she has any plans for the weekend. First on the agenda is sleep; everything else will come after. “I’m going to have a really chill weekend with nothing planned except for a meeting-a-friend-for-a-meal sort of thing,” she says.
Rest is something she’s trying harder to prioritize. Burnout, she’s learned, can push you to the brink. And when you finally break, the results can be “devastating.” Luckily she has the perfect coach to help her unwind. “My cat shows me how to relax,” she says. “He lies there all day. Every so often he’ll get up and he’ll do that cat stretch. And it’s so elegant and it’s so yummy, he reminds me to get up and stretch,” she says.
As the car pulls over to my drop-off location, I ask her a parting question. If you were an animal, which would you be: cat or dog?
“Definitely a cat,” she says. “People have told me I’m very feline in the past. And now that I have a cat, I understand.”
It reminds me of a conversation we had earlier. Cats, we’d decided, are much more nuanced than dogs; they are moody and unpredictable. They get jealous and vengeful. They want solitude yet crave attention. They can fall from great heights but recover and get back up.
“They’re like people,” I offered and she agreed.
“Yeah, they are. They’re like people.”
Ariana Yaptangco is Glamour’s senior beauty editor. Follow her @arianayap
Photographer + Director: Adrienne Raquel, styling by Rachael Wang, hair by Vernon François, makeup by Nick Barose, manicure by Diem Truong, set design by Bette Adams, produced by Ilona Klaver, DP: Ricardo Pomares.
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