Abigail Remonet was considered by most to be an attractive girl, though she did not concern herself with what others thought. At one time she may have suffered from esteem issues, but in general she was not one to be concerned with her appearance beyond good hygiene and fitness. Though fitness was newer on her list of priorities. She had certainly not always been as fit as she was currently, but she always tended towards mildly athletic. She had no interest in team sports, however, so she found little outlet beyond martial arts (her dad's idea) until her late 20's that she had started to gain a real affinity for yoga and the treadmill. The great thing was that she could practice these in the privacy of her home.
This focus on her own body, without the ulterior motive of trying to "look good" gave her more confidence and a sense of independence, leaving her quite happy to be a single girl. Staying in shape was not for others, it was solely for the way it made her feel. At work, she dressed well enough to be professional, but did not make attempts to "impress" via wardrobe.
In reality, Abby, as she went by to her acquaintances and her few friends, was seen as a brilliant but introspective type. As previously stated, she was an athletic girl. Being a slender but defined 5'8" combined with her smooth dark complexion, people were often annoyingly surprised she was not actively dating. "Diamond in the rough" was something said about her more than once, as was "THE girl next door" though again, Abby did not concern herself with such things.
Had she heard someone actually call her "girl next door" she would have rolled her eyes, but she would not be in complete disagreement. As a girl of mixed ethnicity, her mother was Haitian and her father was Puerto Rican via New York, she felt that she represented the melting pot concept made real. She would not have even considered the other implications of the phrase in terms of her appearance.
To say Abby tends towards a loner persona would not be a false assumption to make based on these facts. But it would not be accurate to say that Abby was averse to dating or relationships. Abby had been in love in fact, during her college years, but it was a chaotic emotional time and so it went the way most college romances.
She had, in fact, dated several men (and even considered a request for a date by a girl she met at the bookstore), but she was completely at peace with her current status of being single. She had been so going on 4 years, and while she was 2 years into her 30's she wasn't worried about some arbitrary time frame.
And while she certainly felt she was not an asexual, she often felt that the mental effort to maintain the level of human interaction to be in an ongoing relationship was tiring. She considered that maybe she hadn't met the right person, but she wasn't going to go out of her way to do so. Especially not in a world that had kittens needing fostering. Besides, she felt it was easier to just take care of her personal needs when they reared up by taking care of it herself. Not that she indulged very often, sometimes once or twice a week, occasionally more.
Most weekdays Abby worked diligently at her job. She was part of a small team of eight computer graphics professionals at a marketing firm. She was good at her job and even though she was only required to be in office one day a week, she rarely worked from home. There were two reasons for this: one, she was aware of her relative introversion and understood that being socially isolated that much could be unhealthy, and two, being at work made her visible and therefore made her feel more secure in her position. Though soon, this preference could change.
She had a few work friends, mostly the kind you talk to at work alone, but not too much (never in fact) outside of work. However, over the last year she had begun to build a good friendship with a guy on an adjacent work team. She really enjoyed Phil's company, but only platonic-ally, though she was pretty sure he was interested in more, she didn't worry he would push the matter. He seemed to understand her boundaries and the risks of workplace dating. It didn't hurt that he was shy, but he was also a little too into his interests, to the point of awkward. She liked science fiction, for instance, but did not wear it like a badge as Phil did. Still he was fun to hang out with to watch the occasional weird movie or board game and occasionally drink with.
Her best friend Sarah had recently had to relocate to the adjacent city due to her commute and so they only really met up on the weekends now, and not every one of them at that. Lately Sarah had been really busy with some work project and had told her she had to fly to India or something for a couple weeks.
Abby didn't live with humans, but she did not live alone. Abby had taken to fostering a pair of rescue cats until they had found a permanent owner through one of the local shelters. Abby already owned two cats, a fancy Fluffy Persian named Pringle Pants, and a scrappy Siamese mix named Rocket after the character (yes, she didn't care that the character was a raccoon), and they were kind of dubious to the new additions, so she kept them in the back half of the house for now, slowly trying to get them to where she can trust them alone together. One of the foster cats was a big grey mutt who honestly didn't seem capable of being upset. His name was Baxter. The other was a slightly odd cat. It was very fancy, almost tiger like strips on the back, and leopard like spots on the front, but it's behavior could be unsettling at times. Athena was her name, and she was as polite a cat as Abby had ever met, but she looked right in your eyes with a weird intensity.
Athena also always seemed to show genuine appreciation for everything Abby did for her, and always responded to Abby's un-selfconscious chatter as if she understood. She seemed to appreciate being spoken at, and did not have the usual aloofness that her own cats had. Fostering cats regardless of how polite was fulfilling to her so she did not feel she was missing out on a Friday night while others went drinking or dancing.