I am leaving my therapist’s office, a blue and purple painted cocoon with glass Tiffany lamps and a comfy blue recliner. It’s been a rough couple of weeks for me. I’ve been knocked off my game by a recurrence of unreasonable sadness and lack of motivation.
“I think that’s what you’re really needing in your life right now,” she says, and sends me on my way.
Over the last year, she has coaxed my cynical self into trying some guided meditations. I held back for a time – it seemed a little bit like “The Secret” or some other weird Oprah shit. But I’ll be dammed if it didn’t start to work. Really work.
Riding back to my neighborhood on the 36 bus, I turn the idea of “true love” over a few times in my head. I tack it up in there, like a Post-it on my wall.
I had been writing at Starbucks for an hour when my phone jingled with a text message from The Russian:
Do u want this cat?
The Russian and I don’t have a relationship so much as a chemical dependency. One that’s been going on for more years than I care to admit and that’s featured failed attempts on both of our parts to have a real boyfriend/girlfriend.
At the end of the summer, The Russian’s youngest sister, just out of college, moved to the City with her two cats. But her new roommate already had two cats, so one of the sister’s kitties was sent to live with The Russian.
The Russian and The Cat developed an uneasy coexistence, punctuated with exclamations of “Cat! Fuck off!” (The Russian) and bouts of bed pissing (The Cat).
“If he pees in my fucking bed one more time, I’m putting him out in the street,” said The Russian one night, as The Cat lay purring on my chest.
“Nooo!” I protested on behalf of the sweet black furball, “He’s just lonely.”
“Don't you want another cat?” he asked me.
Not especially. The prospect of being single, living alone with multiple cats hits a little too close to the stereotype for my liking. But I made him promise that if he got to the point of booting The Cat to the streets or a shelter, he’d call me first.
So here we are, a couple months after that fateful utterance. A flurry of texts reports that The Cat has to go, there’s a six-month waiting list for the no-kill shelters, and the sister is in tears.
Back at the apartment, I look into the blue eyes of Andromeda, my sweet six year-old Siamese mix. “Brace yourself,” I tell her. “You’re getting a little brother.”
Within an hour The Russian’s impossibly tall, beautiful and apologetic sister is standing in my living room clutching a pink cat carrier and a sad plastic Jewel-Osco bag with The Cat’s meager belongings: a box of Purina Indoor Cat Formula and one toy mouse with a bell on its tail.
Before I go to bed, I dutifully turn on my meditation CD, trying to push aside the sounds of Andromeda’s territorial growling and The Cat’s curious trilling. I send up my request for True Love, and The Cat tangles himself in the window blinds.
I get about one hour of sleep.
It’s been a few days. The Cat has been renamed Odin. He and Andromeda are getting along surprisingly well, though he can’t understand why she won’t just play with him already. He has a meow loud enough to wake the dead, smoky tufts of fur between his toes and can entertain himself for a good hour dribbling a jingle ball all around the apartment with his paws like a soccer player.
I announced the news on Facebook, to congratulations and ribbing from my friends. “What’s the official cat lady threshold?” asked C.
I’m telling myself that it’s five. And that this is the last one.
And I guess I’m not sure how I feel that I sent a request for True Love into the Universe and in return I got…..another cat.
Siblings (with toy)
Welcome Odin
