Author: /u/Ryan_Rei_I_guess

Over the course of the 2021 MLB season, I had posted a picture of my cat Nori for each time the Astros won. Some of you may have wondered what the story was behind the orange cat who showed up after each Astros win. Well, I’m here to share it with you all now. But before I tell that story, I have to tell this story:

In 2017, my wife and I made an impulsive decision to buy season tickets for the Astros that year. We actually bought them at the very end of 2016, but we were there for almost every game in 2017. During that year, we signed the player Nori Aoki. This player quickly became my wife’s favorite. She actually cried when he was traded later in the season. Y’all remember when he came back with the blue jays and hit a three run homer against us? Yeah, she was the only person in the crowd who cheered. That being said, the season continued, and we got to experience our first world series as a couple. We even got to walk the flag out onto the field before game 3 So if you sat around section 156, that’s where we were and you probably saw us sitting right in front of the bullpen.

On November 1st, 2017, the Astros won their first championship in franchise history. It’s a moment I’ll cherish for the rest of my life (and every hoe who’s mad because they cheated at a game can suck my dick).

We already had our two cats, kitty and Calamari. Cal was growing into his tweener years and we wanted to get a third cat for him to play with, since kitty was on the older side. My wife insisted that we adopt a long haired cat and wouldn’t consider anything else. Two months later in January, my wife and I were at the mall. We walked past the local pet store and saw the most beautiful orange kitten in the window. I fell in love at first sight and pointed him out right away. We asked to play with him and he immediately put his charm on for both of us, and before long my wife fell in love as well. Y’know the saying the animal picks the owner? That’s exactly what happened that night. That being said, we didn’t actually plan to buy him! One of the employees later came by and said the store was closing and that they needed to put him away. I was prepared to give him back and leave but on a whim I asked for more info on him. The shopkeeper says “he’s a boy, we’re pretty sure he’s a Maine Coon, and his birthday is November 1st of last year.”

November 1st?? I turned to my wife and said ‘we have to get this cat today.’ He was born the day the Astros won the world series! So we promptly bought him, and then came the headache of picking a name. I told my wife we had to name him something related to the Astros, but she wouldn’t settle for a name like Jose or Carlos. Finally I said, what about Nori? She liked that one better but said, ‘eh, he doesn’t really look like a Nori’. ‘Nori’ was all we could agree on, though, and ultimately Nori became his name. My wife came around once we made the connection that we could relate the nickname ‘Nori’ to our other seafood cat, Calamari (Cal for short).

Nori is the sweetest and most cuddly cat I’ve ever known. He puts on the charm anytime we walk in his direction. He has at least four distinct cries he uses in different scenarios: 1. Whisper meow 2. Demanding squeak 3. Bored roar 4. Distressed YEOW He’s also incredibly photogenic, which is part of the reason why I began to post photos of him.

Nori is and always will be my Astros cat. Knowing we had a good team this year, I wanted to share him with the Astros community as something positive and quirky for each win. I couldn’t have imagined it catching on as much as it did. I’ll never forget early on in the season when I had forgotten to post, u/SWErdnase911 reached out to me to check and make sure Nori and I were okay. I went into the post game thread like three hours late and quite a few comments were asking for Nori. There was another user who reached out with a more personal story that was very touching and brought me to tears. I know it seems dumb to post a picture of my cat for each Astros win, but if Nori made any of your days better because you got to see him, then it was worth it. The following that has grown for Nori has been incredible and so much fun in the post game thread each day, with half of the users shouting “praise be!” in the comments. SWE is always the first response without fail; and shoutout to u/Burt-Macklin for coming in the next day without fail to say “praise be!” u/doingthedogdance made this glorious picture and posted it a few times in response, and naturally I saved it (and still have it as my phone background). I also need to thank the discord as well! Some of the most creative stuff came out of the discord when it related to Nori. There are so many other users who helped make all of this special and I apologize for not being able to tag you in this post. No matter what, it was a season to remember with Nori. I’m sad that we couldn’t close out the world series, but I’m happy we got to have this much fun after having to deal with the negativity that was thrown our way in the wake of the scandal.

So with all of that being said: NORI WILL RETURN FOR THE 2022 SEASON There will be games where I may not post him right away, specifically west coast games or matinee games while I’m at work. But I WILL make sure to post a pic of him within 12 hours of the result of the game. And in the rare event that I absolutely cannot, I will have that taken care of! Nori isn’t just my cat, he’s the Astros cat, and I look forward to posting with you all for many years to come! It’s been so much fun posting and interacting with all of you this season. Nori loves all of you, and I do too. Go Stros!

And now, here’s every picture of Nori, including unreleased photos for games I planned to post! In chronological order from beginning of the season to the end:

Win #1 Win #2 Win #3 Win #4 Win #5 Win #6 Win #7 Win #8 Win #9 Win #10 Win #11 Win #12 Win #13 Win #14 Win #15 Win #16 Win #17 Win #18 Win #19 Win #20 Win #21 Win #22 Win #23 Win #24 Win #25 Win #26 Win #27 Win #28 Win #29 Win #30 Win #31 Win #32 Win #33 Win #34 Win #35 Win #36 Win #37 Win #38 Win #39 Win #40 Win #41 Win #42 Win #43 Win #44 Win #45 Win #46 Win #47 Win #48 Win #49 Win #50 Win #51 Win #52 Win #53 Win #54 Win #55 Win #56 Win #57 Win #58 Win #59 Win #60 Win #61 Win #62 Win #63 Win #64 Win #65 Win #66 Win #67 Win #68 Win #69 (nice) Win #70 Win #71 Win #72 Win #73 Win #74 Win #75 Win #76 Win #77 Win #78 Win #79 Win #80 Win #81 Win #82 Win #83 Win #84 Win #85 Win #86 Win #87 Win #88 Win #89 Win #90 Win #91 Win #92 Win #93 (Division clincher) Win #94 Win #95 ALDS Win #1 ALDS Win #2 ALDS Win #3 ALCS Win #1 ALCS Win #2 ALCS Win #3 ALCS Win #4 (League Champs) WS Win #1 WS Win #2

UNRELEASED NORI PICS:

One of the series where we didn’t sweep Pic for Sweeping the ALDS Pic if we won Game 2 of the ALCS Clinching the ALCS (decided against using this one) Pic if the Astros won Game 1 (before the Morton injury) Pic if we won game 1 (after the Morton injury) WS game 6 win

(I did have one planned for the WS if we won but didn’t take it since we weren’t in position to clinch. It’s something I’ll hopefully revisit next season.)

Thank you all for reading my massive post! Go Astros!