Walking the Cat by Kathleen Dennehy
I am not a cat person. I don’t really have cat people in my life, especially not in my inner circle. I’ve never dated a cat man. In fact, I’ve not dated men who had cats, especially if they mentioned their cats before I was irreversibly attracted to them. I am known to be a not-cat person. I judge women who have cats, especially if they have more than two, no children nor visible male attachments, living, dead, or gay. I have never melted at the sound of meow.
I am well known as someone who loves dogs too much. Forget about letting dogs sleep on the bed, I have showered with dogs. That said, I do not care to identify myself as a dog person, because single women who cheerfully identify themselves as dog persons seem particularly single/needy when posed with their stocking capped pooches for Christmas cards, or when they kiss their drooling dogs’ thin black lips as if they were socially acceptable boyfriend substitutes.
And let’s face it, our kerchief-wearing dogs aren’t about to object or ask for more space. Dogs are intimacy enablers. Their slavish devotion, their damp semblance of intent listening, and panting pretense of noble understanding, is all women really want in and out of the bedroom. Dogs are endearingly un-mysterious, cheerfully unrelenting in pursuit of their needs being met, as well as eager, quick learners- don’t dogs sound like a lot of American women? If so, cats are European women. So, depending on your need for constant affirmation and cult-like devotion or a lifetime of passion/rejection and drawn out, sullen mixed messages, you can fall for either a dog or a cat.
After my divorce, where I lost custody of my beloved Jack Russell/Chihuahua, I found work as a doggy nanny for a touring rock band. Caring for other peoples’ dogs got me out of my borrowed bed of despair. I healed and found human love again, at the dog park, of course. After four years I finally realized when your boyfriend’s dogs love you more than your boyfriend does, it’s time to go. When I left, it was as heartbreaking, if not more so, to leave the dogs as it was to leave the guy. I declared, fist heavenward, that I was going to stay away from guys, dogs, and guys with dogs.
I found a no pets apartment. My resolve to stay single was firm, despite the tempting eye candy of Chihuahuas in studded collars and Italian Greyhounds in striped sweaters. My new found chastity strengthened my resolve. I would even pet other people’s shameless creatures, to prove I was immune to their breathy ardor. However, Los Angeles is not the city to live in if you are weaning yourself from animal love. Everyone in LA has a dog, or four. I believe this is because LA is comprised largely of aspirants, all charging up a Normandy beachfront of artistic or commercial success. We cherish dogs because dogs are the only thing lower on the status ladder than we are.
Finally free, I wondered how we had come to this pass, where we spend billions of dollars a year on non-essential items for beings that happily eat feces they find on the sidewalk. Maybe we are all divorced or single because once we decided we could have it all, we got terribly picky, then realized we were running out of time, and everyone good was taken, and then decided to fill that big, black, empty hole in our hearts with mutts named D’Artagnan or Bodhi, or Cowboy.
Then the cat happened. I didn’t see it coming. You never do.
When I first noticed the homeless striped hobo he was living in the filthy bamboo patch lining my driveway. Mildly concerned, I made no savior gestures, I left that work to the
cat people of the building, who fed and tended the little wretch.
Then one night I was juggling groceries, purse, gym crap and my keys. He darted inside as soon as my door was open. Flabbergasted by his moxie, I watched him scoot into my living room as if he owned the joint. I stomped in after him. “Oh, no you don’t Mister.” I warned him. He gave me the gravelliest meow I’d ever heard, as if he’d been smoking Pall Malls for 20 years. He was awful bony.
“Alright, one can of tuna, then scram. Get me?” I used my tough voice. The cat ignored me and cleaned himself. He was handsome in a bad news kind of way, with sullen big green eyes and a troubled glare that most women find irresistible. Suddenly I wanted a cigarette.
I gave him tuna and tortilla chips, which he ate like in a guy in a movie who’s been crawling in the desert for six months. Hearing that adorable hollow crunching sound reminded me of my ex-dogs, so I left the room, determined to resist this filthy cat’s incidental and questionable charms. I collapsed on my couch. Suddenly he was all over my chest, purring silently, vibrating really. I didn’t like his presumption. I showed him the door. “A can of tuna does not entitle you to dessert, Mr. Grabby.”
He left quietly, wondering what he had done wrong, and I felt a tiny pang closing the door. I slept that night, but the cat had done significant damage to the castle walls of my resistance. I hectored the neighbors to take him in. They all already had two, three cats, dogs. I offered to take him to a shelter, but the neighbors didn’t want him to go away, they were all fond of him. The looks they gave me were hard to dodge. Their hallway glares became a noose tightening around my pet-free neck. At first I was impervious, I was proud that they hated my liberation. I stayed out late, took trips out of town just to rub their shackled noses in the cat poop they were forced to scoop. I feigned allergies. No one bought it. I didn’t see the alley cat again. I figured he was avoiding me.
Then I was woken one morning at dawn by baby screams. My hobo one night stand was on the losing end of a half nelson as administered by a fat orange tabby. Running outside in my nightgown, I grabbed the bag of bones and brought him inside without even discussing it with myself beforehand. I put out food, and went back to bed. Hours later, I woke up sweating, as the cat, squeaky clean, was draped across my neck, a vibrating fur boa. When I picked him up I found the quarter sized hole in his chest. I gasped, but he gave me a patented, Patrick Swayze “Pain don’t hurt” kind of look. We went to the vet.
He cost me 500 bucks before I could even commit to naming him. But I liked the cat at first because he didn’t bother me. All he could do was sleep since he was on drugs and wearing a massive plastic cone on his head to stop him from licking the fragile scab off his wound. He was like one of those large avocado pits you bring home from school in a plastic cup with toothpicks holding it up. Just feed it and watch it grow. He didn’t ask for anything I didn’t feel like giving. If I remembered the cat, if he caught my eye outside feeding time, I’d see how he liked the bottom of the chin maneuver, and move on, satisfied I’d given at the office.
Once the large cone came off, he turned into Pepe Le Pew. That first night, he silently climbed into my bed, large green eyes scanning my goods. I felt like I’d had one too many shame inducing martinis as he calmly strode up my supine body, eyes locked with mine. He was as light as fingers on a spine as he climbed my ladder of limbs and internal organs, yet his insistence made him feel so… substantial.
He proceeded to recline on my head. Suddenly I knew how Julie Christie must have felt in that hat in Doctor Zhivago. And that was where he chose to remain, glued to any horizontal body part, his faint purr sounding like wind rustling tinsel on a drying out Christmas tree. I learned how to sleep while wearing a vibrating fur hat. At first it was very “When Harry Met Sally”. Oh, I guess this, after all, is love.
Then we entered our “Sid and Nancy” phase. We hated falling in love with each other. I was used to the obvious adoration of a dog, but to get too much love from a cat that I only liked because initially he didn’t ask anything from me, well I felt betrayed. I’d grown accustomed to his silent, surly ingratitude; it felt familiar, safe, like my marriage.
Instead of realizing it was too soon for me to love again, his leech-like attachment to my body would annoy me, and I’d push him off. Ten minutes later I’d find him in a sleeping fetal position on a sunny spot of rug and I’d scare the daylights out of him with a sudden rush of affection. I’d cradle him in my arms and kiss him, platonically. I must have driven him nuts, but I just wasn’t ready.
He got pushy. He abuses me with his hot, demanding appreciation. He needs to show the love and get the love in return, constantly. He’ll always be an addict. I’ve come to terms with this. I’m typing this now with his head resting on my left hand. I even got him hooked on cat nip, just to get a break from his persistent pawing, his endless churlishness if I didn’t feed him enough, or on time, or love him right when he wanted. I now know what it would be like to live in a trailer, with a man who has a mustache, a gun, and a fondness for Jim Beam. And so I hate myself for loving him.
And he hates loving me right back. He forces his head under my hand because we both know no one else can plays his fiddle like I do. He wants me to pet him hard, push him down and squeeze his ears really hard. Then he puts a paw up on my arm as if to say, “enough” and he rolls over and passes out. I lie there, feeling so used. I know what Lorena Bobbitt felt like right before she picked up that fateful pair of scissors, except this one is already fixed. He rubs up against me when I feed him, and I simmer about how men always get horny with a barefoot woman in the kitchen, making their chow. But I know better than to complain. He’s deaf to my needs. No, really. He’s deaf.
He wakes me up in the middle of the night just because he can. I yell back “What more do you want from me? I’ve maxed out a credit card to keep you alive, I feed you at 3 am, I scoop your shit on my hands and knees, give me peace, damn you!” His lunar green eyes speak volumes. “I might be deaf, but I’d rather hear you say you hate me then to never hear your voice.” He has a French accent-- no it’s Scottish. He’s Ewan MacGregor, a Scottish bantam rooster of false promises and greedy paws. Oh no, I just cast my cat. As an actor I’d relentlessly pressure to sleep with me for the role… of my cat. It’s not good if I’m conjuring thoughts of blackmailing Ewan MacGregor into sleeping with me in order to play the role of my cat in the movie of my… cat. But if he did take on the role of “Smokey”, the deaf, homeless, toothless, but scrappy feline, he’d win an Oscar.
Yeah, I named the little shit. Because he’s deaf, he has the meow Tom Waits might have if he were a cat. Hey, Tom Waits could play the old hobo cat Smokey meets on the train, who teaches Smokey the ropes and how to sing “Jimmy Crack Corn and I Don’t Care”.
Of course I want a dog now, to balance out the single-chick-with-cat stigma and to keep Smokey company when I work, but in the meantime I am dog training the cat. We go for long walks at night where he follows me around the neighborhood. He likes to be scratched behind his ears, and even shakes his back leg if I find a really good itchy spot, just like a dog. I’ve taught him to shake, and he has only naked contempt for cat toys. He responds to my whistle, it’s the only sound he can hear, he begs when I eat dinner, and he better start barking soon. Because I am telling you, I am not a cat person.
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