Will you meowy me?

In 2019, Oregon native Grant Schroeder commissioned Heloísa Nora, a cat artist, to draw a portrait of his beloved pet, Luna. 

But Heloísa is not your typical artist. She's popular on Twitter for her account, Poorly Drawn Cats, where she draws people's cats cutely... but... well, poorly. 

After Heloísa delivered the drawing of Luna, Grant shared the masterpiece on his Twitter account. And that's when UK resident Emma Ferguson took notice.

❤️ Call it fate... Emma also had a cat named Luna, and was a big fan of Heloisa's work. So she followed Grant on Twitter.

• "I saw a pic on his account of him holding his Luna," she told NPR. "Cute boy with cat — must follow, of course!" 

👀 Feline Each Other... Grant and Emma started chatting about their respective cats – and soon realized they had more in common than just their fur babies. We're all familiar with the progression that followed: start talking in the DMs (as Yo Gotti would say, it goes down in the DMs), move to texts/Snapchats, then upgrade to daily FaceTime/phone calls.

Before they knew it, the two were in love. But there was just one issue: an entire ocean and country separated them. Toss in a global pandemic, and now we're talking about more obstacles to overcome than a Ninja Warrior course.

• Emma was living in the UK pre-pandemic, while Grant was all the way in the Pacific Northwest. Then Covid hit.
• "We had known from the start that we both loved each other and wanted to make this work," said Grant. And even through the pandemic and various lockdowns, the duo did just that.

🐱🖌💍 A Purrfect Ending... The couple was engaged on New Year's Eve and got married this past summer. 

• "Obviously, I had no clue that I was about to find my wife through Twitter, but things have a funny way of turning out," said Grant. 
• "I just thought I'd get to see posts of his cat on my timeline," shared Emma. "I got a lot more than that, and I'm very glad I did."

🥳 Cheers to the artist: As for Heloísa, she's thrilled for the couple and happy her artwork helped bring them together. "It's nice what we can do with the internet these days," she said. "I would've never imagined that a cat drawing would result in a beautiful story!"