I Could So Be a Crazy Cat Lady
Down the central road of our trailer park, there was a woman with four kids whose names all started with the same initial, and they were bad enough—well, actually, two of them weren’t so bad, but the other two more than made up for that in their general bitchiness and bully-ness. I had to hand it to them, though; all of us kids in the park were bullied often on the bus, and those two gave as much as they got.
Anyway, their mother had a ton of cats; I don’t know how many, but I heard them crying from their trailer all of the time. But here’s the really big weirdness factor: she made them literally sing for their supper. “Sing, kitties!” she’d cry, and they’d yowl for ten minutes or longer before she fed them. It was really creepy—so creepy that to this day, my husband will occasionally do it just to freak me out and yell, “Stop it! Just feed them!”
But I could totally see myself being a crazy cat lady someday. I’d never make my cats sing for their supper, but if I lived alone I could definitely end up adopting more than the legal limit of cats. I don’t think I’d get to hoarder status, but my furniture would definitely be hairy. See, I adore my cats. I’m not a fetishist or anything; I don’t have to buy a certain brand of food or clothing for them or anything (yeah, clothed cats are weird), but they are some of my favorite people.
I went through a phase when I didn’t care about them much when my baby was born and I was more worried about her; but once she was two, we adopted two( and then another this year) and by the time she was oh, four, the first two had grown on me tremendously. When I write, they gather around me protectively. When I take a nap, all three gather around—the baby River, a black short-hair, his tentative steps barely registering on the blanket; Fuego, our crier and general teddy bear tabby, dumping himself on my feet; and Sky, my favorite (don’t tell!), a diluted calico who can’t seem to sleep without purring loudly in my face, or painfully fluffing my ribs with her claws.
These non-human persons could easily be my life-long companions—and I still want more! When I have a tough day, I always remark, “I could use a kitten.” No chocolate or foot rubs for me, folks; I just need feline therapy. Hopefully I’ll never be lonely enough to depend on cats for my sole company, but who knows? If that’s the way I end up, I have to admit there’d be worse scenarios to imagine.