Dispatches from my Cat Life
Cats in the house were such a fact of my childhood that when I went with my mother to Rome, I was shocked to discover that cats could be homeless. And then outraged when Mum said that no, I could not bring them all back to the hotel.
By age eleven, I should have figured out that our cats – Brie and Camembert, who gave me ringworm, and then Liza, who was my first Tuxedo love – were available precisely because no one had wanted them. But even now – with decades of rescue work behind me – I remain shocked and outraged at how many cats, with their mysterious moods and authoritative beauty, remain homeless.
Mostly, I’m grateful for what cats – both mine and the worlds’ – have given me. Liza died just as I finished college, published my first novel, and tried to find my way in the world. I wound up in an MFA program, but to study film instead of writing.
It was not a good fit. My neighborhood in Brooklyn, however, was. The people who lived there shared one universally acknowledged truth:
A single woman must be in want of a cat.
An elderly man who owned five buildings on my block, knocked on my door with Percy. Abandoned by his previous human, Percy, my second tuxedo love, was overjoyed by everything. He forgave my long days at school and enlivened my evenings. I usually left parties and dates early so that Percy and I could play, read, or nap.
When he died eight months later of feline leukemia, the colors in my world drained back to the gray of film school. But within a few months, Sophie and Sebastian, dumped at a liquor store with three litter mates, found their way to me via the store’s owner. My landlord said I could keep two, but not five. I called eleven cat rescues until finding one that agreed to take the other three. The liquor store owner told me everything was on the house, and we had a good laugh as I don’t drink.
We each have skeletons in our closet, and mine is that I married a man allergic to cats. Sophie and Sebastian went to live long and happy lives with two of my sisters. I became a full-time writer. But four moves and ten years later, my cat-free marriage began to falter. I signed up to volunteer at the Humane Society only to immediately fall in love with a huge and splendid Maine Coon mix, who lived with me for almost 16 years. Our relationship was longer than the marriage.
I brought the spectacularly splendid cat home and my husband started on a heavy allergy-pill regime. When the marriage ended — amicably — I kept the cat.
Dorcas (it means gazelle in Greek) seduced everyone he met and tamed a host of foster dogs. Maine Coons are often called the ‘dog of the cat world.’ And it is true that he liked to follow me about, carry toys in his mouth, and roll over on his back. But he was enough of a cat to treat me with a disdainful love. Until he got too old to bother, he greeted me at the door, woke me up to demand food and did his best to let me know I was both the love of his life as well as a deep disappointment.
Dorcas kept me sane and, often, happy.
But even he needed help to get me through the first year of the pandemic. I put on two masks and went to volunteer at a dog rescue that never said no to cats. There, I cleaned up poop, washed dishes, held dying dogs, and rinsed out the ulcerated eyes of three kittens found in a hoarder’s apartment.
Even without him, as I settle into waiting for the next cat to find me, I know that life’s one constant is that every cat I know has rescued me. Life inside that cliche is rich beyond measure so I leave you with three more:
Adopt don’t shop. Fostering saves lives. The life you save may be your own. And I can improve on what my neighbors in Brooklyn believed: Everyone is in want of a cat. Hopefully the Dorcas Project will bring that truth home to you, along with your very own cat.
