Archive | Cat Lady Matters

Amazing Grace

Daily prayer.

As I type this, Grace is sitting on my legs and purring loudly enough that I can not only hear it but feel it. This is momentous because I spent the entire day looking for her while I was supposed to be packing for New York. She disappeared this morning and, because I’d left the front door open while moving things back and forth from my car, I began to fear that she was gone forever. If she had fled into the environs surrounding this Truro house, chances were high that she would be lost or severely injured. All kinds of animals live in these woods–coyotes included—and she’s never spent any time outside since we rescued her on the streets of Brooklyn when she was three weeks old. She was by herself, eating trash and hiding behind a stoop. The size of my palm, she was so little that she normally would not yet have been weaned. I believe that this is why she remains a permakitten. Like me, she was never safe as a child.

At first I assumed my little one had just found a new hiding place. But after after a few hours, I started to get nervous. I turned off all the electronics in the house and sang “Love You Madly,” the Ella and Duke song to which she has come running since she first became my charge eight years go. But she didn’t come. I turned the house upside down and still didn’t find her. And then I started to imagine the upheaval had so upset her that she’d run outside and had gotten lost. Maybe eaten. Continue Reading →

First and Forest

When I first came to Truro, it was only to be for a month. I had put the word out among my extended circle that I was looking to live in rural New England in September, and had rolled my eyes as I’d done so. Who’d be willing to lend me their empty house wily-nily for four weeks?

I had gall.

But as is often the case when change is necessary, that gall paid off. A friend from high school—someone I liked but had never known well—got in touch through Facebook, and next thing I knew Grace and I were hurtling to Truro in a car full of cat food, thin cotton dresses, and platform shoes.

That’s who I was on September 7. Tired eyes, disappointed smiles, trailing glamour like yesterday’s big idea. Grief-stricken about the hateful ignorance validated by the Trussian Oligarchy. Grief-stricken about who I no longer was. Continue Reading →

Space Crone Mermaid Vs Full Taurus Moon

Sirenaders, here was my full moon night: I scrubbed and shined and vaccumed the whole house because no one likes a spotless hearth like a Taurus moon and because godfamily is rolling into town and why not make them as welcome as humanly possible? Then I’d thought I’d set the alarm for the automatic drip but set it to brew instead, which meant I had to pour a full carafe into a thermos and set up the coffeemker once again because God forbid I start tomorrow without freshfreshfresh coffee. Then I couldn’t find my boots anywhere and finally went outside to discover they were flung outside my car’s drivers seat door, which also had been flung open all day. “OKAY, full moon,” I said. “I get it. YOU BAR BUSINESS AS USUAL.” In one fluid motion, I stepped into my boots and car, and drove, high beams glaring, Coffee FM* blaring, down the winding, unlit road to the beach. To lean in rather than lean out. To do what I might never get to do again. To pay homage to the beaver moon’s stop-everything-and let-it-go-let-it-go bewitchery right alongside the tide it was changing. Continue Reading →

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy