Leave the Cat Ladies Alone!

If you live in the country, it's almost inevitable that at some point in time you will end up dripping with cats. They show up at your house, you adopt them from a neighbor, you have a mouse problem, another one shows up at your house.

As a current reluctant and confused suburban dweller, I've downsized to one cat, the fluffy, chubby, toothless and loveable Oscar Meyer Weiner-Lockman. I am madly in love with him, as I was with Sadie, until my dad fell madly in love with her and decided to keep her in West Virginia forever. Oscar is my Colorado cat and my life would be much gloomier without him.

At this point, I'm somewhat of a caricature of a cat lady in-training. There's a litter box in my bedroom. If that isn't a deterrent to potential suitors, the fact that Oscar loves to step on faces and jugular veins could be. I don't know. I find it all hilarious and loveable.

So why do women who have cats that they love get so much flack? I mean, I love a good joke at someone else's expense as much as the next person, but there's nothing wrong with a woman who has a cat. Or even two or three. Everybody needs to love and be loved, and sometimes a pet is the easiest way to guarantee that you'll get and give love. Just imagine if every person who is sometimes lonely and has a pet to help combat that loneliness, had a child instead of that pet.

We'd be overpopulated in a millisecond.

That's not to say that pet ownership is only for people who are lonely. That's obviously not true. But the lonely are the ones who get the most shit about it. And the women who have cats, especially women who are single or live alone, get even more shit about it than men. Because, I don't know, it's unnatural for a woman to have a cat instead of a child. (I have no idea. I'm assuming that's why there's this sexist stigma around "cat ladies").

You see, some people are young or old or sick or brokenhearted or going through major changes or busy or happy and for any or all of the above reasons, pets become almost as important as the people in their lives. Sometimes, as much as their bodies want them to be popping out babies left and right, their brains know that having a cat to love on is much wiser than entering a relationship with someone they meet on OkCupid! whose religion is "Dude-ism."

I have no doubt that when the time comes for me to have babies and another significant other it will happen. But for now, sharing my bed with Oscar is as much as I can deal with. It's not because I'm crazy. It's because I can move the litter box when company comes over. It's much easier than trying to find a baby sitter, or ignore the crushing weight of loneliness.

So come on over boys!

Oscar's waiting to snuggle....

Ann Patchett's Truth & Beauty: Crying & Friendship

For me, one of the delights of not being in school has always been rediscovering my love of reading. Armed with a library card, a decent used bookstore, a friend or two with a good library, and adequate free time, I can disappear for hours and hours. I resurface feeling slightly bleary-eyed, empty yet more full. The best books always leave me a bit sad, even if their contents made me laugh so loudly that I attract the attention of folks in airports or my sleeping cat. While I've asserted in this blog before, that reading does not count as writing, the two are closely intertwined. When I'm reading a lot, I write a lot.

Today I devoured Ann Patchett's novel Truth & Beauty, her memoir about her friendship with Lucy Grealy, a poet and the author of Autobiography of a Face. I'd never heard of Lucy Grealy or read anything that Ann Patchett had written. Bel Canto stares at me every time I look for something to read at my parents' house, but I'm always daunted by the description on the back and the awards it has written. I don't instantly relate to the description on the dust jacket, but I do relate to a story about friendship.

I used to cry a lot when I was growing up, but it's become a rarer occurrence. It occurs when I've had too much to drink and not enough to eat, or when I'm talking about myself and my future. I avoid it as much as possible. I don't like to burden myself or others with my sadness, as from an objective standpoint, I have very little to be sad about. Movies and TV shows provide a free pass for tears. If I can project sadness onto an episode of How I Met Your Mother, I am safe. Books on the other hand, are a more personal matter. There's no sense in crying if there's no audience to provide a possibility of relief. When you finish a book, there's no tangible evidence. People don't hear you reading it. Books may put me into a mental state of sadness, but they seldom bring on any physical symptoms of it. But when I finished Truth & Beauty an hour ago, I cried.

The last time I remember crying after reading a book, I was 13 or 14 and I'd just finished one of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants books. Both books are about friendship and loving a person unconditionally. I think I sometimes have difficulty forming romantic relationships because it's hard to comprehend loving anyone more than I love some of my friends. I'd think long and hard before moving somewhere for a romantic partner, but I'd move to live closer to friends in a heartbeat. In fact, friendship is one of the biggest reasons I moved to Boulder.

The thing is, Lucy Grealy sounds like a difficult person to be friends with. She requires constant reassurance and seems to provide little in return. I've have a few friends like that, and while I swear up and down that I would follow them to the ends of the earth, I haven't. I've distanced myself from them very deliberately in an act of self-preservation. I'm not sure I have the strength or wherewithal to stand by a friend in the same way that Ann Patchett did.

This also reminded me of what I'd like to call Lockman's Transitive Property, and makes me worry about where I fit into it in regards to friendship.
Lockman's Transitive Property goes as follows:
a. If you don't have a weird roommate, you are the weird roommate. (This is almost always true in groups of 3 or more)
b. If you don't have a gay cousin, you are the gay cousin. (This one is less often true, but thought-provoking nonetheless)

So can it apply to friendship as well? If you don't have a friend who is difficult and incredibly needy, are you the friend who is difficult and incredibly needy? Have I become this person for some of my friends?

These are the kinds of thoughts that occur most often after spending the better part of a Sunday reading a good book. It's too far past my bedtime to develop many deliverables beyond the following list.
1. Write more
2. Get a library card
3. Cry sober
4. Be a good friend
5. Go to sleep

Good Neighbors Make Great Fences

If you've seen the news recently, you'll know it's flooding in Boulder. My house and all of my friends are currently fine, but because floods are incredibly rare here, houses, yards, roads and emergency services are not very flood-proof.

When we first realized that this wasn't just a bit of rain, there was a weird sense of jubilation, like the feeling of a snow day. It was reminiscent of all of my childhood fantasies of being stranded at school due to snow. In typical 20-something fashion, my roommate and I drove gleefully into the storm to rescue our other roommate from work. We stopped at a liquor store on the way back to stock up on beer. Typical 20-something emergency preparedness. We made jokes about building an ark. We were fine.

Thirty minutes and one beer later, the street in front of our house was fairly flooded. One hour later, it was completely flooded. While walking around the area surveying the damage, I ran into some neighbors of mine who were hauling rocks to the edge of the street in a desperate attempt to keep water out of their yard. I had some doubts about the efficacy of their rock wall, but I offered to help. Soon there were 5 or 6 of us moving rocks, helping our neighbors protect their yard.

The flood is by no means over, but seeing folks take time out from their gawking (because honestly, that's what we were all doing) made me feel good about humanity, and scared for the future.

WARNING, SHIT IS GONNA GET SERIOUS IN THIS POST

Because climate change is happening. I have no doubt that this flood following a summer of forest fires is yet another sign of climate change. Whether you deny it or not, we're going to have some pretty extreme weather in the future. And in order for the human race to survive, we're going to have to help out our neighbors. We're going to have to help build those walls, keep each other informed, share our food, water, and time. So know your neighbors and be prepared to help them out. Let's hope they'll do the same for you.